Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge (27 July 1857 – 23 November 1934) was an English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient Near East.[1] He made numerous trips to Egypt and the Sudan on behalf of the British Museum to buy antiquities, and helped it build its collection of cuneiform tablets, manuscripts, and papyri, he published many books on Egyptology, helping to bring the findings to larger audiences. In 1920 he was knighted for his service to Egyptology and the British Museum.

E.A. Wallis Budge was born in 1857 in Bodmin, Cornwall, to Mary Ann Budge, a young woman whose father was a waiter in a Bodmin hotel. Budge's father has never been identified. Budge left Cornwall as a boy, and eventually came to live with his maternal aunt and grandmother in London.[2]

Budge became interested in languages before he was ten years old, but left school at the age of twelve in 1869 to work as a clerk at the retail firm of W.H. Smith, which sold books, stationery and related products. (It continues to do so.) In his spare time, he studied Hebrew and Syriac with the aid of a volunteer tutor named Charles Seeger. Budge became interested in learning the ancient Assyrian language in 1872, when he also began to spend time in the British Museum. Budge's tutor introduced him to the Keeper of Oriental Antiquities, the pioneer Egyptologist Samuel Birch, and Birch's assistant, the Assyriologist George Smith. Smith helped Budge occasionally with his Assyrian. Birch allowed the youth to study cuneiform tablets in his office and obtained books for him from the British Library of Middle Eastern travel and adventure, such as Sir Austen Henry Layard's Nineveh and Its Remains.

From 1869 to 1878, Budge spent his free time studying Assyrian, and during these years, often spent his lunch break studying at St. Paul's Cathedral. John Stainer, the organist of St. Paul's, noticed Budge's hard work, and met the youth, he wanted to help the working-class boy realize his dream of becoming a scholar. Stainer contacted W.H. Smith, a Conservative Member of Parliament, and the former Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, and asked them to help his young friend. Both Smith and Gladstone agreed to help Stainer to raise money for Budge to attend Cambridge University.[3]

Budge studied at Cambridge from 1878 to 1883, his subjects included Semitic languages: Hebrew, Syriac, Ethiopic and Arabic; he continued to study Assyrian independently. Budge worked closely during these years with William Wright, a noted scholar of Semitic languages, among others.[3]

Illustration by Budge from Egyptian Ideas Of The Future Life, published 1908

Budge entered the British Museum in 1883 in the recently renamed Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities. Initially appointed to the Assyrian section, he soon transferred to the Egyptian section, he studied the ancient Egyptian language with Samuel Birch until the latter's death in 1885. Budge continued to study ancient Egyptian with the new Keeper, Peter le Page Renouf, until the latter's retirement in 1891.

Between 1886 and 1891, Budge was assigned by the British Museum to investigate why cuneiform tablets from British Museum sites in Iraq, which were to be guarded by local agents of the Museum, were showing up in the collections of London antiquities dealers. The British Museum was purchasing these collections of what were their "own" tablets at inflated London market rates. Edward Bond, the Principal Librarian of the Museum, wanted Budge to find the source of the leaks and to seal it. Bond also wanted Budge to establish ties to Iraqi antiquities dealers in order to buy available materials at the reduced local prices, in comparison to those in London. Budge also travelled to Istanbul during these years to obtain a permit from the Ottoman Empire government to reopen the Museum's excavations at these Iraqi sites, the Museum archeologists believed that excavations would reveal more tablets.

During his years in the British Museum, Budge also sought to establish ties with local antiquities dealers in Egypt and Iraq so that the Museum could buy antiquities from them, and avoid the uncertainty and cost of excavating, this was a 19th-century approach to building a museum collection, and it was changed markedly by more rigorous archeological practices, technology and cumulative knowledge about assessing artifacts in place. Budge returned from his many missions to Egypt and Iraq with large collections of cuneiform tablets; Syriac, Coptic and Greek manuscripts; as well as significant collections of hieroglyphicpapyri. Perhaps his most famous acquisitions from this time were the Papyrus of Ani, a Book of the Dead; a copy of Aristotle's lost Constitution of Athens, and the Tell al-Amarna tablets. Budge's prolific and well-planned acquisitions gave the British Museum arguably the best Ancient Near East collections in the world, at a time when European museums were competing to build such collections; in 1900 the Assyriologist Archibald Sayce said to Budge, ". . . What a revolution you have effected in the Oriental Department of the Museum! It is now a veritable history of civilization in a series of object lessons . . ."[5]

Budge became Assistant Keeper in his department after Renouf retired in 1891, and was confirmed as Keeper in 1894, he held this position until 1924, specializing in Egyptology. Budge and collectors for other museums of Europe regarded having the best collection of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities in the world as a matter of national pride, and there was tremendous competition for such antiquities among them. Museum officials and their local agents smuggled antiquities in diplomatic pouches, bribed customs officials, or simply went to friends or countrymen in the Egyptian Service of Antiquities to ask them to pass their cases of antiquities unopened, during his tenure as Keeper, Budge was noted for his kindness and patience in teaching young visitors to the British Museum.[6]

Budge's tenure was not without controversy; in 1893 he was sued in the high court by Hormuzd Rassam for both slander and libel. Budge had written that Rassam had used his relatives to smuggle antiquities out of Nineveh and had sent only "rubbish" to the British Museum, the elderly Rassam was upset by these accusations, and when he challenged Budge, he received a partial apology that a later court considered "ungentlemanly". Rassam was supported by the judge but not the jury, after Rassam's death, it was alleged that, while Rassam had made most of the discoveries of antiquities, credit was taken by the staff of the British Museum, notably Henry Layard.[7]

Budge was also a prolific author, and he is especially remembered today for his works on ancient Egyptian religion and his hieroglyphic primers. Budge argued that the religion of Osiris had emerged from an indigenous African people:

"There is no doubt", he said of Egyptian religions in Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection (1911), "that the beliefs examined herein are of indigenous origin, Nilotic or Sundani in the broadest signification of the word, and I have endeavoured to explain those which cannot be elucidated in any other way, by the evidence which is afforded by the Religions of the modern peoples who live on the great rivers of East, West, and Central Africa . . . Now, if we examine the Religions of modern African peoples, we find that the beliefs underlying them are almost identical with those Ancient Egyptian ones described above, as they are not derived from the Egyptians, it follows that they are the natural product of the religious mind of the natives of certain parts of Africa, which is the same in all periods."

Budge's contention that the religion of the Egyptians was derived from similar religions of the people of northeastern and central Africa was regarded as impossible by his colleagues, at the time, all but a few scholars followed Flinders Petrie in his theory that the culture of Ancient Egypt was derived from an invading Caucasoid "Dynastic Race," which had conquered Egypt in late prehistory and introduced the Pharaonic culture.

Budge's works were widely read by the educated public and among those seeking comparative ethnological data, including James Frazer, he incorporated some of Budge's ideas on Osiris into his ever-growing work on comparative religion, The Golden Bough.

Budge was also interested in the paranormal, and believed in spirits and hauntings. Budge had a number of friends in the Ghost Club (British Library, Manuscript Collections, Ghost Club Archives), a group in London committed to the study of alternative religions and the spirit world, he told his many friends stories of hauntings and other uncanny experiences. Many people in his day who were involved with the occult and spiritualism after losing their faith in Christianity were dedicated to Budge's works, particularly his translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Such writers as the poet William Butler Yeats and James Joyce studied and were influenced by this work of ancient religion. Budge's works on Egyptian religion have remained consistently in print since they entered the public domain.

Budge was a member of the literary and open-minded Savile Club in London, proposed by his friend H. Rider Haggard in 1889, and accepted in 1891. He was a much sought-after dinner guest in London, his humorous stories and anecdotes being famous in his circle, he enjoyed the company of the well-born, many of whom he met when they brought to the British Museum the scarabs and statuettes they had purchased while on holiday in Egypt. Budge never lacked for an invitation to a country house in the summer or to a fashionable townhouse during the London season.[8]

Though Budge's books remain widely available, since his day both translation and dating accuracy have improved, leading to significant revisions, the common writing style of his era—a lack of clear distinction between opinion and incontrovertible fact—is no longer acceptable in scholarly works.

Budge along with many colonialists of the time stole artifacts like the Papyrus of Ani, from the Egyptian government in 1888, he of course describes it in his two-volume book By Nile and Tigris, for the collection of the British Museum, where it remains today.

Budge was knighted in the 1920 New Year Honours for his distinguished contributions to Colonial Egyptology and the British Museum;[9] in the same year he published his sprawling autobiography, By Nile and Tigris.

He retired from the British Museum in 1924, and lived until 1934, he continued to write and published several books; his last work was From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt (1934).

In his will, in remembrance of his wife, Budge established and endowed the Lady Wallis Budge Junior Research Fellowships and graduate scholarships at Cambridge and Oxford universities, these continue to support young Egyptologists at the beginning of their research careers.

Budge is mentioned briefly in the movie Stargate as the author of several outdated books on Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Budge is frequently mentioned, though he appears "on-stage" only once, in the Amelia Peabody series of mystery novels by "Elizabeth Peters" (Egyptologist Dr. Barbara Mertz); in Amelia's husband Emerson's dogmatic opinion, Budge is a poor archaeologist and an unscrupulous plunderer of Egypt. The same novels also refer to Flinders Petrie, who never appears on-stage, as a scrupulous, scientific archaeologist and rival to Emerson. Dr. Mertz refers in passing to some of Petrie's eccentric personal habits.

1895 The Book of the Dead: The Papyrus of Ani in the British Museum; the Egyptian Text with Interlinear Transliteration and Translation, a Running Translation, Introduction, etc. British Museum. (Reprinted New York: Dover Publications, 1967)

1920 By Nile and Tigris: A Narrative of Journeys in Egypt and Mesopotamia on Behalf of the British Museum Between the Years 1886 and 1913. 2 vols. (London, John Murray). Reprinted New York: AMS Press, (1975). Reprinted in one paperback volume, Hardinge Simpole, (2011) [1]

1927, transl. from Syriac, The Book of the Cave of Treasure, st Ephrem the Syrian

1928 The Divine Origin of the Craft of the Herbalist. London, The Society of Herbalists (Reprinted New York, Dover Books, 1996)

1928 A History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia. (Reprinted Oosterhout, the Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1970)

1929 The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum: The Greek, Demotic and Hieroglyphic Texts of the Decree Inscribed on the Rosetta Stone Conferring Additional Honours on Ptolemy V Epiphanes (203–181 B.C.) with English Translations and a Short History of the Decipherment of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs, and an Appendix Containing Translations of the Stelae of Ṣân (Tanis) and Tall al-Maskhûṭah. London: The Religious Tract Society. (Reprinted New York: Dover Publications, 1989)

1929 Mike, The cat who assisted in keeping the main gate of the British Museum from February 1909 to January 1929, R. Clay & Sons, Ltd., Bungay, Suffolk

1932a The Chronicle of Gregory Abû'l Faraj, 1225–1286, the Son of Aaron, the Hebrew Physcian, Commonly Known as Bar Hebraeus; Being the First Part of His Political History of the World, Translated from Syriac. 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press. (Reprinted Amsterdam: Apa-Philo Press, 1976)

1932b The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son, Menyelek (I); Being the "Book of the Glory of Kings" (Kebra Nagast), a Work Which is Alike the Traditional History of the Establishment of the Religion of the Hebrews in Ethiopia, and the Patent of Sovereignty Which is Now Universally Accepted in Abyssinia as the Symbol of the Divine Authority to Rule Which the Kings of the Solomonic Line Claimed to Have Received Through Their Descent from the House of David; Translated from the Ethiopic. 2nd ed. 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press.)

Morrell, Robert. 2002. "Budgie…": The Life of Sir E. A. T. Wallis Budge, Egyptologist, Assyriologist, Keeper of the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum, 1892 to 1924. Nottingham: [privately published]

Bodmin
–
Bodmin is a civil parish and major town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated south-west of Bodmin Moor, the extent of the civil parish corresponds fairly closely to that of the town so is mostly urban in character. It is bordered to the east by Cardinham parish, to the southeast by Lanhydrock parish, to the southwest and west by Lan

Cornwall
–
Cornwall is a ceremonial county and unitary authority area of England within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, Cornwall has a population of 551,700 and covers an area of 3,563 km2. Cornwall forms the westernmost part of the south-west peninsula of the island of Great Bri

1.
"Cornweallas" shown on an early 19th-century map of "Saxon England" (and Wales) based on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

London
–
London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city

United Kingdom
–
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border wi

4.
The Treaty of Union led to a single united kingdom encompassing all Great Britain.

Egyptology
–
A practitioner of the discipline is an Egyptologist. In Europe, particularly on the Continent, Egyptology is primarily regarded as being a philological discipline, the first explorers were the ancient Egyptians themselves. Thutmose IV restored the Sphinx and had the dream that inspired his restoration carved on the famous Dream Stele, less than two

Philology
–
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources, it is a combination of literary criticism, history, and linguistics. It is more defined as the study of literary texts and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist, in older usa

Orientalism
–
In particular, Orientalist painting, representing the Middle East, was a genre of Academic art in the 19th century. Orientalism refers to the Orient, in reference and opposition to the Occident, the East, the word Orient entered the English language as the Middle French orient. In the “Monks Tale”, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote, “That they conquered many

1.
Anonymous Venetian orientalist painting, The Reception of the Ambassadors in Damascus, 1511, the Louvre. The deer with antlers in the foreground is not known ever to have existed in the wild in Syria.

British Museum
–
The British Museum is dedicated to human history, art and culture, and is located in the Bloomsbury area of London. The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician, the museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. Although today principally

1.
British Museum

2.
The centre of the museum was redeveloped in 2001 to become the Great Court, surrounding the original Reading Room.

Ancient Near East
–
The ancient Near East is studied in the fields of Near Eastern archaeology and ancient history. The ancient Near East is considered one of the cradles of civilization and it also saw the creation of the first writing system and law codes, early advances that laid the foundations of astronomy and mathematics, and the invention of the wheel. During t

1.
Overview map of the ancient Near East

W.H. Smith
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Its headquarters are in Swindon, Wiltshire. Smiths is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE250 Index and it was the first chain store company in the world, and was responsible for the creation of the ISBN book catalogue system. In 1792, Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna established the business as a vendor in Littl

Hebrew
–
Hebrew is a language native to Israel, spoken by over 9 million people worldwide, of whom over 5 million are in Israel. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, the earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Hebrew belongs to the West Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languag

Syriac language
–
Syriac /ˈsɪri. æk/, also known as Syriac Aramaic, is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent and Eastern Arabia. Indeed, Syriac literature comprises roughly 90% of the extant Aramaic literature, Old Aramaic was adopted by the Neo-Assyrian Empire when they conquered the various Aramean city-kingdoms to it

Akkadian language
–
Akkadian is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the writing system, which was originally used to write the unrelated Ancient Sumerian. The language was named after the city of Akkad, a centre of Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire. The mutual influ

Samuel Birch
–
Samuel Birch was a British Egyptologist and antiquary. Birch was the son of a rector at St Mary Woolnoth and he was educated at Merchant Taylors School. From an early age, his manifest tendency to the study of out-of-the-way subjects well suited his later interest in archaeology, after brief employment in the Record Office, he obtained, in 1836, an

1.
Samuel Birch

George Smith (assyriologist)
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George Smith, was a pioneering English Assyriologist who first discovered and translated the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest-known written works of literature. As the son of a family in Victorian England, Smith was limited in his ability to acquire a formal education. At age fourteen, he was apprenticed to the London-based publishing house of

1.
George Smith

Cuneiform
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Cuneiform script, one of the earliest systems of writing, was invented by the Sumerians. It is distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus, the name cuneiform itself simply means wedge shaped. Emerging in Sumer in the fourth millennium BC, cuneiform writing began as a system of pictograms. In

3.
Letter sent by the high-priest Lu'enna to the king of Lagash (maybe Urukagina), informing him of his son's death in combat, c. 2400 B.C.E., found in Telloh (ancient Girsu).

4.
Cuneiform inscriptions, Stela of Iddi-Sin, king of Simurrum.

Austen Henry Layard
–
Sir Austen Henry Layard GCB PC was an English traveller, archaeologist, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, politician and diplomat. He is best known as the excavator of Nimrud and of Niniveh, where he uncovered a large proportion of the Assyrian palace reliefs known, Layard was born in Paris, France, to a family of Huguenot descen

4.
From a German edition of Austen Layard's A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh.

John Stainer
–
Sir John Stainer was an English composer and organist whose music, though not generally much performed today, was very popular during his lifetime. His work as trainer and organist set standards for Anglican church music that are still influential. He was also active as an academic, becoming Heather Professor of Music at Oxford, Stainer was born in

1.
Sir John Stainer

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St Michael's College, Tenbury

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Interior of Magdalen College Chapel

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St Paul's Cathedral at about the time Stainer was organist

William Ewart Gladstone
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William Ewart Gladstone, FRS, FSS was a British Liberal and earlier conservative politician. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times, more than any other person, Gladstone was also Britains oldest Prime Minister, he resigned for the final time when he was 84 years old. Gladstone first entered Parliament

4.
A pensive Gladstone, from the book Great Britain and Her Queen, by Anne E. Keeling

Cambridge University
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The University of Cambridge is a collegiate public research university in Cambridge, England, often regarded as one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Founded in 1209 and given royal status by King Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world. The university grew out of an association of

Semitic languages
–
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family originating in the Middle East. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen School of History, the most widely spoken Semitic languages today are Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya, Hebrew, Aramaic and Maltese. Among them are the Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic,

Ethiopic
–
Geez is a script used as an abugida for several languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea. It originated as an abjad and was first used to write Geez, now the language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. In Amharic and Tigrinya, the script is often called fidäl, the Geez script has been adapted to write other, mostly Semitic, languages, particularly

1.
Drawing of the Virgin Mary 'with her beloved son,' from a Geʻez manuscript copy of Weddasé Māryām, circa 1875.

Arabic
–
Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and

William Wright (orientalist)
–
Prof William Wright LLD was a famous British Orientalist, and Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge. Many of his works on Syriac literature are still in print and of considerable value, especially the catalogues of the holdings of the British Library. A Grammar of The Arabic Language, often known as Wrights Grammar. Wright is also reme

1.
The grave of Prof William Wright, St Andrews Cathedral churchyard

Ancient Egyptian language
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The language spoken in ancient Egypt was a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. The earliest known complete sentence in the Egyptian language has been dated to about 2690 BCE, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the seventeenth century in the form of Coptic. The national language of modern Egypt is

1.
Seal impression from the tomb of Seth-Peribsen, containing the oldest known complete sentence in Egyptian

Iraq
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The capital, and largest city, is Baghdad. The main ethnic groups are Arabs and Kurds, others include Assyrians, Turkmen, Shabakis, Yazidis, Armenians, Mandeans, Circassians, around 95% of the countrys 36 million citizens are Muslims, with Christianity, Yarsan, Yezidism, and Mandeanism also present. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kur

4.
Bill of sale of a male slave and a building in Shuruppak, Sumerian tablet, circa 2600 BCE

Istanbul
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Istanbul, historically known as Constantinople and Byzantium, is the most populous city in Turkey and the countrys economic, cultural, and historic center. Istanbul is a city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosphorus strait between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of i

Ottoman Empire
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After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal sta

Egypt
–
Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, the Red Sea to the east and south, Su

Coptic language
–
Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the latest stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afroasiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Several distinct Coptic dialects are identified, the most prominent of which are Sahidic, originating in parts of Upper Egypt, Coptic and Demotic are grammatically closely related to Late Egyptian,

Greek language
–
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Li

Hieroglyph
–
A hieroglyph is a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called hieroglyphs, in Neoplatonism, especially during the Renaissance, a hieroglyph was an artistic representation of an esoteric idea, which Neoplatonists believed actual

Papyri
–
The word papyrus /pəˈpaɪrəs/ refers to a thick precursor to modern paper made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus. Papyrus can also refer to a document written on sheets of papyrus joined together side by side and rolled up into a scroll, the plural for such documents is papyri. Papyrus is first known to have used in ancient Egypt.

Papyrus of Ani
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The Papyrus of Ani is a papyrus manuscript with cursive hieroglyphs and color illustrations created c.1250 BCE, in the 19th dynasty of the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt. The Papyrus of Ani is the manuscript compiled for the Theban scribe Ani, note, Divisions vary based on compilations, Sections are groups of related sentences, Titles are not origina

1.
Thoth's declaration to the Ennead, based on the weighing of the heart of the scribe Ani

Aristotle
–
Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist born in the city of Stagira, Chalkidice, on the northern periphery of Classical Greece. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, at seventeen or eighteen years of age, he joined Platos Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven. Shortly after Plato died

1.
Roman copy in marble of a Greek bronze bust of Aristotle by Lysippus, c. 330 BC. The alabaster mantle is modern.

Tell al-Amarna
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The name for the city employed by the ancient Egyptians is written as Akhetaten in English transliteration. Akhetaten means Horizon of the Aten, the city of Deir Mawas lies directly west across from the site of Amarna. Amarna, on the east side, includes several villages, chief of which are el-Till in the north. The area was occupied during later Ro

Hormuzd Rassam
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He is accepted as the first-known Chaldeans, Ottoman and Middle Eastern archaeologist. He was known to be Christian, later in life, he emigrated to the United Kingdom, where he was naturalized as a British citizen, settling in Brighton. He represented the government as a diplomat, helping to free British diplomats from captivity in Ethiopia, Hormuz

1.
Hormuzd Rassam in Mosul c. 1854.

2.
Rassam (far left) with the other captives of Tewodros

Nineveh
–
Nineveh was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located on the outskirts of Mosul in modern-day northern Iraq. It is on the bank of the Tigris River, and was the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. It is also a name for the half of Mosul which lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris in the modern day. Its ruins are across the river from t

3.
The king hunting lion from the North Palace, Nineveh seen at the British Museum

4.
Bronze lion from Nineveh.

Henry Layard
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Sir Austen Henry Layard GCB PC was an English traveller, archaeologist, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, politician and diplomat. He is best known as the excavator of Nimrud and of Niniveh, where he uncovered a large proportion of the Assyrian palace reliefs known, Layard was born in Paris, France, to a family of Huguenot descen

4.
From a German edition of Austen Layard's A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh.

Ancient Egyptian religion
–
Ancient Egyptian religion was a complex system of polytheistic beliefs and rituals which were an integral part of ancient Egyptian society. It centered on the Egyptians interaction with many deities who were believed to be present in, and in control of, rituals such as prayers and offerings were efforts to provide for the gods and gain their favor.

Osiris
–
Osiris was an Egyptian god, usually identified as the god of the afterlife, the underworld, and the dead, but more appropriately as the god of transition, resurrection, and regeneration. He was also associated with the epithet Khenti-Amentiu, meaning Foremost of the Westerners, as ruler of the dead, Osiris was also sometimes called king of the livi

Nilotic
–
In a more general sense, the Nilotic peoples include all descendants of the original Nilo-Saharan speakers. Among these are the Luo, Sara, Maasai, Kalenjin, Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Ateker, the Nilotes make up the majority of the population in South Sudan, an area that is believed to be their original point of dispersal. After the Bantu people, they c

Africa
–
Africa is the worlds second-largest and second-most-populous continent. At about 30.3 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earths total surface area and 20.4 % of its land area. With 1.2 billion people as of 2016, it accounts for about 16% of the human population. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos and it

Flinders Petrie
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Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, FRS, FBA, commonly known as Flinders Petrie, was an English Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom, some consider his most famous discovery to be that of the Merneptah Stele, an opinion with wh

4.
A photograph Petrie took of his view from the tomb he lived in in Giza 1881

Caucasoid
–
Ancient and modern Caucasoid populations were thus held to have ranged in complexion from white to dark brown. In the United States, the root term Caucasian has also often used in a different. First introduced in early racial typologies and anthropometry, the term denoted one of three purported races of humankind. The appellation Caucasian for the

Ethnological
–
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationship between them. The term ethnologia is credited to Adam Franz Kollár who used and defined it in his Historiae ivrisqve pvblici Regni Vngariae amoenitates published in Vienna in 1783, the distinction between the three terms

James Frazer
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Sir James George Frazer OM FRS FRSE FBA was a Scottish social anthropologist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion. He is often considered one of the fathers of modern anthropology. His most famous work, The Golden Bough, documents and details the similarities among magical, Frazer posited that

1.
Sir James George Frazer

2.
A snake shedding its skin

3.
Dead banana plants

The Golden Bough
–
The Golden Bough, A Study in Comparative Religion is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by the Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer. It was first published in two volumes in 1890, in three volumes in 1900, and in 12 volumes in the edition, published 1906–15. The work was aimed at a literate audience rais

3.
The Judgement of Paris - an Etruscan bronze-handled mirror of the fourth or third century BC that relates the often misunderstood myth as interpreted by Frazer, showing the three goddesses giving their apple or pomegranate to the new king, who must kill the old king - Campana Collection, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, Sully

Paranormal
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A paranormal phenomenon is different from hypothetical concepts such as dark matter and dark energy. Unlike paranormal phenomena, these concepts are based on empirical observations. The most notable paranormal beliefs include those that pertain to ghosts, extraterrestrial life, unidentified flying objects, psychic abilities or extrasensory percepti

1.
MediumEva Carrière photographed in 1912, with an apparent light appearing between her hands.

2.
Charles Fort, 1920. Fort is perhaps the most widely known collector of paranormal stories.

Occult
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The occult is knowledge of the hidden. In common English usage, occult refers to knowledge of the paranormal, as opposed to knowledge of the measurable, the terms esoteric and arcane can also be used to describe the occult, in addition to their meanings unrelated to the supernatural. Occultism is the study of practices, including magic, alchemy, ex

2.
Part of the Pyramid Texts, a precursor of the Book of the Dead, inscribed on the tomb of Teti

3.
The mystical Spell 17, from the Papyrus of Ani. The vignette at the top illustrates, from left to right, the god Heh as a representation of the Sea; a gateway to the realm of Osiris; the Eye of Horus; the celestial cow Mehet-Weret; and a human head rising from a coffin, guarded by the four Sons of Horus.

4.
Two 'gate spells'. On the top register, Ani and his wife face the 'seven gates of the House of Osiris'. Below, they encounter ten of the 21 'mysterious portals of the House of Osiris in the Field of Reeds'. All are guarded by unpleasant protectors.

2.
E. Nesbit's grave in St Mary in the Marsh's churchyard bears a wooden grave marker made by her second husband, Thomas Terry Tucker. There is also a memorial plaque to her inside the church.

The Story of the Amulet

1.
First edition

The Egyptian Book of the Dead

2.
Part of the Pyramid Texts, a precursor of the Book of the Dead, inscribed on the tomb of Teti

3.
The mystical Spell 17, from the Papyrus of Ani. The vignette at the top illustrates, from left to right, the god Heh as a representation of the Sea; a gateway to the realm of Osiris; the Eye of Horus; the celestial cow Mehet-Weret; and a human head rising from a coffin, guarded by the four Sons of Horus.

4.
Two 'gate spells'. On the top register, Ani and his wife face the 'seven gates of the House of Osiris'. Below, they encounter ten of the 21 'mysterious portals of the House of Osiris in the Field of Reeds'. All are guarded by unpleasant protectors.

Religious Tract Society

1.
Illustration from ”The Sunday at Home”, 1880, one of their publications.

The Legend of the destruction of mankind

1.
The sky goddess Nut depicted as a cow and supported by the eight Heh gods

3.
The original National Library building on Kings Avenue, Canberra, was designed by Edward Henderson. Originally intended to be several wings, only one wing was completed and was demolished in 1968. Now the site of the Edmund Barton Building.

4.
The library seen from Lake Burley Griffin in autumn.

National Diet Library

1.
Tokyo Main Library of the National Diet Library

2.
Kansai-kan of the National Diet Library

3.
The National Diet Library

4.
Main building in Tokyo

LIST OF IMAGES

1.
Bodmin
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Bodmin is a civil parish and major town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated south-west of Bodmin Moor, the extent of the civil parish corresponds fairly closely to that of the town so is mostly urban in character. It is bordered to the east by Cardinham parish, to the southeast by Lanhydrock parish, to the southwest and west by Lanivet parish, Bodmin had a population of 12,778. This population had increased to 14,736 at the 2011 Census and it was formerly the county town of Cornwall until the Crown Courts moved to Truro which is also the administrative centre. Bodmin was in the administrative North Cornwall District until local government reorganisation in 2009 abolished the District, the town is part of the North Cornwall parliamentary constituency, which is represented by Scott Mann MP. Bodmin Town Council is made up of sixteen councillors who are elected to serve a term of four years, each year, the Council elects one of its number as Mayor to serve as the towns civic leader and to chair council meetings. Bodmin lies in the east of Cornwall, south-west of Bodmin Moor and it has been suggested that the towns name comes from an archaic word in the Cornish language bod and a contraction of menegh. The monks dwelling may refer to a monastic settlement instituted by St. Guron. Guron is said to have departed to St Goran on the arrival of Petroc, the hamlets of Cooksland, Dunmere and Turfdown are in the parish. St. Petroc founded a monastery in Bodmin in the 6th century, the monastery was deprived of some of its lands at the Norman conquest but at the time of Domesday still held eighteen manors, including Bodmin, Padstow and Rialton. Bodmin is one of the oldest towns in Cornwall, and the only large Cornish settlement recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086, in the 15th century the Norman church of St Petroc was largely rebuilt and stands as one of the largest churches in Cornwall. Also built at that time was an abbey of canons regular, for most of Bodmins history, the tin industry was a mainstay of the economy. The name of the town derives from the Cornish Bod-meneghy. Variant spellings recorded include Botmenei in 1100, Bodmen in 1253, Bodman in 1377, an inscription on a stone built into the wall of a summer house in Lancarffe furnishes proof of a settlement in Bodmin in the early Middle Ages. It is a memorial to one Dunoatus son of Mecagnus and has dated from the 6th to 8th centuries. Arthur Langdon records three Cornish crosses at Bodmin, one was near the Berry Tower, one was outside Bodmin Gaol, there is also Carminow Cross at a road junction southeast of the town. The Black Death killed half of Bodmins population in the mid 14th century, Bodmin was the centre of three Cornish uprisings. Then, in the autumn of 1497, Perkin Warbeck tried to usurp the throne from Henry VII, Warbeck was proclaimed King Richard IV in Bodmin but Henry had little difficulty crushing the uprising

2.
Cornwall
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Cornwall is a ceremonial county and unitary authority area of England within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, Cornwall has a population of 551,700 and covers an area of 3,563 km2. Cornwall forms the westernmost part of the south-west peninsula of the island of Great Britain, and this area was first inhabited in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods. It continued to be occupied by Neolithic and then Bronze Age peoples, there is little evidence that Roman rule was effective west of Exeter and few Roman remains have been found. In the mid-19th century, however, the tin and copper mines entered a period of decline, subsequently, china clay extraction became more important and metal mining had virtually ended by the 1990s. Traditionally, fishing and agriculture were the important sectors of the economy. Railways led to a growth of tourism in the 20th century, however, the area is noted for its wild moorland landscapes, its long and varied coastline, its attractive villages, its many place-names derived from the Cornish language, and its very mild climate. Extensive stretches of Cornwalls coastline, and Bodmin Moor, are protected as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Cornwall is the homeland of the Cornish people and is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, retaining a distinct cultural identity that reflects its history. Some people question the present constitutional status of Cornwall, and a nationalist movement seeks greater autonomy within the United Kingdom in the form of a devolved legislative Cornish Assembly. On 24 April 2014 it was announced that Cornish people will be granted minority status under the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. The modern English name Cornwall derives from the concatenation of two ancient demonyms from different linguistic traditions, Corn- records the native Brythonic tribe, the Cornovii. The Celtic word kernou is cognate with the English word horn. -wall derives from the Old English exonym walh, the Ravenna Cosmography first mentions a city named Purocoronavis in the locality. This is thought to be a rendering of Duro-cornov-ium, meaning fort of the Cornovii. The exact location of Durocornovium is disputed, with Tintagel and Carn Brea suggested as possible sites, in later times, Cornwall was known to the Anglo-Saxons as West Wales to distinguish it from North Wales. The name appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 891 as On Corn walum, in the Domesday Book it was referred to as Cornualia and in c.1198 as Cornwal. Other names for the county include a latinisation of the name as Cornubia, the present human history of Cornwall begins with the reoccupation of Britain after the last Ice Age. The area now known as Cornwall was first inhabited in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods and it continued to be occupied by Neolithic and then Bronze Age people. The Common Brittonic spoken at the time developed into several distinct tongues

3.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area

4.
United Kingdom
–
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state‍—‌the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government

5.
Egyptology
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A practitioner of the discipline is an Egyptologist. In Europe, particularly on the Continent, Egyptology is primarily regarded as being a philological discipline, the first explorers were the ancient Egyptians themselves. Thutmose IV restored the Sphinx and had the dream that inspired his restoration carved on the famous Dream Stele, less than two centuries later, Prince Khaemweset, fourth son of Ramesses II, is famed for identifying and restoring historic buildings, tombs and temples including the pyramid. The Ptolemies were much interested in the work of the ancient Egyptians, the Romans too carried out restoration work in this most ancient of lands. A number of their accounts have survived and offer insights as to conditions in their time periods. Abdul Latif al-Baghdadi, a teacher at Cairos Al-Azhar University in the 13th century, similarly, the 15th-century Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi wrote detailed accounts of Egyptian antiquities. In the early 17th century, John Greaves measured the pyramids, having inspected the broken Obelisk of Domitian in Rome, then destined for the Earl of Arundels collection in London. In the late 18th century, with Napoleons scholars recording of Egyptian flora, fauna and history, the British captured Egypt from the French and gained the Rosetta Stone. Modern Egyptology is generally perceived as beginning about 1822, egyptologys modern history begins with the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon Bonaparte. The subsequent publication of Description de lÉgypte between 1809 and 1829 made numerous ancient Egyptian source materials available to Europeans for the first time, jean-François Champollion, Thomas Young and Ippolito Rosellini were some of the first Egyptologists of wide acclaim. The German Karl Richard Lepsius was a participant in the investigations of Egypt, mapping, excavating. Champollion announced his general decipherment of the system of Egyptian hieroglyphics for the first time, the Stones decipherment was a very important development of Egyptology. Egyptology became more professional via work of William Matthew Flinders Petrie, Petrie introduced techniques of field preservation, recording, and excavating. Howard Carters expedition brought much acclaim to the field of Egyptology, a tradition of collecting objets-orientales Egyptologists Electronic Forum, version 64. List shows Egyptology societies and Institutes Egyptology at DMOZ Egyptology Books, the University of Memphis Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology. Hawass, Zahi, Brock, Lyla Pinch, eds, Egyptology at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Egyptologists. Rare Books and Special Collections Digital Library Underwood & Underwood Egypt Stereoviews Collection, czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague

6.
Philology
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Philology is the study of language in written historical sources, it is a combination of literary criticism, history, and linguistics. It is more defined as the study of literary texts and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist, in older usage, especially British, philology is more general, covering comparative and historical linguistics. Indo-European studies involves the comparative philology of all Indo-European languages, Philology, with its focus on historical development, is contrasted with linguistics due to Ferdinand de Saussures insistence on the importance of synchronic analysis. The contrast continued with the emergence of structuralism and Chomskyan linguistics alongside its emphasis on syntax, the term changed little with the Latin philologia, and later entered the English language in the 16th century, from the Middle French philologie, in the sense of love of literature. The adjective φιλόλογος meant fond of discussion or argument, talkative, in Hellenistic Greek also implying an excessive preference of argument over the love of true wisdom, as an allegory of literary erudition, Philologia appears in 5th-century post-classical literature, an idea revived in Late Medieval literature. The meaning of love of learning and literature was narrowed to the study of the development of languages in 19th-century usage of the term. Most continental European countries still maintain the term to designate departments, colleges, position titles, J. R. R. Tolkien opposed the nationalist reaction against philological practices, claiming that the philological instinct was universal as is the use of language. Based on the critique of Friedrich Nietzsche, US scholars since the 1980s have viewed philology as responsible for a narrowly scientistic study of language. The comparative linguistics branch of philology studies the relationship between languages, similarities between Sanskrit and European languages were first noted in the early 16th century and led to speculation of a common ancestor language from which all these descended. Philology also includes the study of texts and their history and it includes elements of textual criticism, trying to reconstruct an authors original text based on variant copies of manuscripts. Since that time, the principles of textual criticism have been improved and applied to other widely distributed texts such as the Bible. Scholars have tried to reconstruct the original readings of the Bible from the manuscript variants and this method was applied to Classical Studies and to medieval texts as a way to reconstruct the authors original work. A related study method known as higher criticism studies the authorship, date, as these philological issues are often inseparable from issues of interpretation, there is no clear-cut boundary between philology and hermeneutics. When text has a significant political or religious influence, scholars have difficulty reaching objective conclusions, some scholars avoid all critical methods of textual philology, especially in historical linguistics, where it is important to study the actual recorded materials. Supporters of New Philology insist on a diplomatic approach, a faithful rendering of the text exactly as found in the manuscript. Another branch of philology, cognitive philology, studies written and oral texts and this science compares the results of textual science with the results of experimental research of both psychology and artificial intelligence production systems. In the case of Bronze Age literature, philology includes the prior decipherment of the language under study and this has notably been the case with the Egyptian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Hittite, Ugaritic and Luwian languages

7.
Orientalism
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In particular, Orientalist painting, representing the Middle East, was a genre of Academic art in the 19th century. Orientalism refers to the Orient, in reference and opposition to the Occident, the East, the word Orient entered the English language as the Middle French orient. In the “Monks Tale”, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote, “That they conquered many regnes grete / In the orient, with many a fair citee. ”The term “orient” refers to countries east of the Mediterranean Sea and Southern Europe. In Place of Fear, Aneurin Bevan used an expanded denotation of the Orient that comprehended East Asia, “the awakening of the Orient under the impact of Western ideas”. Edward Said said that Orientalism “enables the political, economic, cultural and social domination of the West, not just during colonial times, but also in the present. ”In art history, the term Orientalism refers to the works of the Western artists who specialized in Oriental subjects, produced from their travels in Western Asia, during the 19th century. In that time, artists and scholars were described as Orientalists, especially in France, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the term Orientalist identified a scholar who specialized in the languages and literatures of the Eastern world. Among such scholars is the philologist William Jones, whose studies of Indo-European languages established modern philology, additionally, Hebraism and Jewish studies gained popularity among British and German scholars in the 18th and 19th century. The academic field of Oriental studies, which comprehended the cultures of the Near East, the thesis of Orientalism develops Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, and Michel Foucaults theorisation of discourse to criticise the scholarly tradition of Oriental studies. Said criticised contemporary scholars who perpetuated the tradition of outsider-interpretation of Arabo-Islamic cultures, especially Bernard Lewis, the analyses are of Orientalism in European literature, especially French literature, and do not analyse visual art and Orientalist painting. In that vein, the art historian Linda Nochlin applied Said’s methods of analysis to art. In the academy, the book Orientalism became a text of post-colonial cultural studies. Early architectural use of motifs lifted from the Indian subcontinent is known as Indo-Saracenic Revival architecture, one of the earliest examples is the façade of Guildhall, London. The style gained momentum in the west with the publication of views of India by William Hodges, examples of Hindoo architecture are Sezincote House in Gloucestershire, built for a nabob returned from Bengal, and the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. Venice, the trading partner of the Ottomans, was the earliest centre. Chinoiserie is the term for the fashion for Chinese themes in decoration in Western Europe, beginning in the late 17th century and peaking in waves, especially Rococo Chinoiserie. From the Renaissance to the 18th century, Western designers attempted to imitate the technical sophistication of Chinese ceramics with only partial success, Early hints of Chinoiserie appeared in the 17th century in nations with active East India companies, England, Denmark, the Netherlands and France. Tin-glazed pottery made at Delft and other Dutch towns adopted genuine Ming-era blue, Early ceramic wares made at Meissen and other centers of true porcelain imitated Chinese shapes for dishes, vases and teawares. Pleasure pavilions in Chinese taste appeared in the formal parterres of late Baroque and Rococo German palaces, Thomas Chippendales mahogany tea tables and china cabinets, especially, were embellished with fretwork glazing and railings, ca 1753–70

8.
British Museum
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The British Museum is dedicated to human history, art and culture, and is located in the Bloomsbury area of London. The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician, the museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. Although today principally a museum of art objects and antiquities. Its foundations lie in the will of the Irish-born British physician, on 7 June 1753, King George II gave his formal assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. They were joined in 1757 by the Old Royal Library, now the Royal manuscripts, together these four foundation collections included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving copy of Beowulf. The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public, sloanes collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests. The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary, the body of trustees decided on a converted 17th-century mansion, Montagu House, as a location for the museum, which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000. The Trustees rejected Buckingham House, on the now occupied by Buckingham Palace, on the grounds of cost. With the acquisition of Montagu House the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. During the few years after its foundation the British Museum received several gifts, including the Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts. A list of donations to the Museum, dated 31 January 1784, in the early 19th century the foundations for the extensive collection of sculpture began to be laid and Greek, Roman and Egyptian artefacts dominated the antiquities displays. Gifts and purchases from Henry Salt, British consul general in Egypt, beginning with the Colossal bust of Ramesses II in 1818, many Greek sculptures followed, notably the first purpose-built exhibition space, the Charles Towneley collection, much of it Roman Sculpture, in 1805. In 1816 these masterpieces of art, were acquired by The British Museum by Act of Parliament. The collections were supplemented by the Bassae frieze from Phigaleia, Greece in 1815, the Ancient Near Eastern collection also had its beginnings in 1825 with the purchase of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities from the widow of Claudius James Rich. The neoclassical architect, Sir Robert Smirke, was asked to draw up plans for an extension to the Museum. For the reception of the Royal Library, and a Picture Gallery over it, and put forward plans for todays quadrangular building, much of which can be seen today. The dilapidated Old Montagu House was demolished and work on the Kings Library Gallery began in 1823, the extension, the East Wing, was completed by 1831. The Museum became a site as Sir Robert Smirkes grand neo-classical building gradually arose

British Museum
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British Museum
British Museum
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The centre of the museum was redeveloped in 2001 to become the Great Court, surrounding the original Reading Room.
British Museum
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Sir Hans Sloane
British Museum
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Montagu House, c. 1715

9.
Ancient Near East
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The ancient Near East is studied in the fields of Near Eastern archaeology and ancient history. The ancient Near East is considered one of the cradles of civilization and it also saw the creation of the first writing system and law codes, early advances that laid the foundations of astronomy and mathematics, and the invention of the wheel. During the period, states became increasingly large, until by the end the region was controlled by military empires who had conquered a number of different cultures. The phrase ancient Near East utilizes the 19th-century distinction between Near East and Far East as global regions of interest to the British Empire, the distinction began during the Crimean War. The two theatres were described by the statesmen and advisors of the British Empire as the Near East, shortly, they were to share the stage with Middle East, which came to prevail in the 20th century and continues in modern times. Meanwhile, ancient Near East had become distinct, the Near East ruled by the Ottoman Empire ranged from Vienna to the north to the tip of the Arabian Peninsula to the south, from Egypt in the west to the borders of Iraq in the east. The 19th-century archaeologists added Iran to their definition, which was never under the Ottomans, but they excluded all of Europe and, generally, Egypt, which had parts in the empire. Ancient Near East periodization is the attempt to categorize or divide time into discrete named blocks, or eras, the result is a descriptive abstraction that provides a useful handle on Near East periods of time with relatively stable characteristics. Named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia. It was followed by the Sumerian civilization, the late Uruk period saw the gradual emergence of the cuneiform script and corresponds to the Early Bronze Age. Sumer, located in southern Mesopotamia, is the earliest known civilization in the world, the Akkadian Empire, founded by Sargon the Great, lasted from the 24th to the 21st century BC, and was regarded by many as the worlds first Empire. The Akkadians eventually fragmented into Assyria and Babylonia, Ancient Elam lay to the east of Sumer and Akkad, in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province. In the Old Elamite period, c.3200 BC, it consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered on Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered on Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Elam was absorbed into the Assyrian Empire in the 9th to 7th centuries BC, however, the Proto-Elamite civilization existed from c.3200 BC to 2700 BC, when Susa, the later capital of the Elamites, began to receive influence from the cultures of the Iranian plateau. In archaeological terms, this corresponds to the late Banesh period and this civilization is recognized as the oldest in Iran and was largely contemporary with its neighbour, the Sumerian civilization. The Proto-Elamite script is an Early Bronze Age writing system briefly in use for the ancient Elamite language before the introduction of Elamite Cuneiform, the Amorites were a nomadic Semitic people who occupied the country west of the Euphrates from the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. In the earliest Sumerian sources, beginning about 2400 BC, the land of the Amorites is associated with the West, including Syria and Canaan and they ultimately settled in Mesopotamia, ruling Isin, Larsa, and later Babylon. Assyria, after enduring a period of Mitanni domination, emerged as a great power from the accession of Ashur-uballit I in 1365 BC to the death of Tiglath-Pileser I in 1076 BC

Ancient Near East
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Overview map of the ancient Near East

10.
W.H. Smith
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Its headquarters are in Swindon, Wiltshire. Smiths is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE250 Index and it was the first chain store company in the world, and was responsible for the creation of the ISBN book catalogue system. In 1792, Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna established the business as a vendor in Little Grosvenor Street. The firm took advantage of the boom by opening news-stands on railway stations. In 1850, the firm opened depots in Birmingham, Manchester and it also ran a circulating library service for a century, from 1860 to 1961. The younger W. H. Smith also used the success of the firm as a springboard into politics, becoming an MP in 1868 and serving as a minister in several Conservative governments. After the death of W. H. Smith the younger, his widow was created Viscountess Hambleden in her own right, their son inherited the business from his father and the Viscountcy from his mother. After the death of the second Viscount in 1928, the business was reconstituted as a company, in which his son. On the death of the third Viscount in 1948, the duties were so severe that a public holding company had to be formed and shares sold to W. H. Smith staff. A younger brother of the third Viscount remained chairman until 1972, but the Smith familys control slipped away, in 1966, W. H. Smith originated a 9-digit code for uniquely referencing books, called Standard Book Numbering or SBN. It was adopted as international standard ISO2108 in 1970, and was used until 1974, from the 1970s, W. H. Smith began to expand into other retail sectors. W. H. Smith Travel operated from 1973 to 1991, the Do It All chain of DIY stores originated with an acquisition in 1979, becoming a joint venture with Boots in 1990. Boots acquired Smiths share in June 1996, the bookshop chain Waterstones, founded by former W. H. Smith executive Tim Waterstone in 1982, was bought in 1989 and sold in 1998. In 1986, W. H. Smith bought a 75% controlling share of the Our Price music chain, in the 1990s it also bought other music retailers including the Virgin Groups smaller shops. The 75% share of Virgin Our Price was sold to Virgin Retail Group Ltd in July 1998 for £145m, WHSmith also owned the American record chain The Wall, which was sold to Camelot Music in 1998. In March 1998, the company acquired John Menzies retail outlets for £68m and this purchase also cleared the way for W. H. Smiths retail expansion into Scotland. Prior to the takeover, Menzies larger Scottish stores dominated the market, for several years, the companys retail side had difficulties competing with specialist book and music chains on one side and large supermarkets on the other. This led to financial performance, and a takeover bid in 2004 by Permira

11.
Hebrew
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Hebrew is a language native to Israel, spoken by over 9 million people worldwide, of whom over 5 million are in Israel. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, the earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Hebrew belongs to the West Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, Hebrew is the only living Canaanite language left, and the only truly successful example of a revived dead language. Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Aramaic and to a lesser extent Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and it survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and poetry. Then, in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, and, according to Ethnologue, had become, as of 1998, the language of 5 million people worldwide. After Israel, the United States has the second largest Hebrew-speaking population, with 220,000 fluent speakers, Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages of the State of Israel, while premodern Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. Ancient Hebrew is also the tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Arabic is their vernacular. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon Hakodesh, the modern word Hebrew is derived from the word Ivri, one of several names for the Israelite people. It is traditionally understood to be a based on the name of Abrahams ancestor, Eber. This name is based upon the root ʕ-b-r meaning to cross over. Interpretations of the term ʕibrim link it to this verb, cross over, in the Bible, the Hebrew language is called Yәhudit because Judah was the surviving kingdom at the time of the quotation. In Isaiah 19,18 it is called the Language of Canaan, Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. In turn, the Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages, according to Avraham ben-Yosef, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during about 1200 to 586 BCE. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile. In July 2008 Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa which he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating around 3000 years ago. The Gezer calendar also dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic Period, classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew, the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks, the Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where later Hebrew spelling requires it

12.
Syriac language
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Syriac /ˈsɪri. æk/, also known as Syriac Aramaic, is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent and Eastern Arabia. Indeed, Syriac literature comprises roughly 90% of the extant Aramaic literature, Old Aramaic was adopted by the Neo-Assyrian Empire when they conquered the various Aramean city-kingdoms to its west. The Achaemenid Empire, which rose after the fall of the Assyrian Empire, also adopted Old Aramaic as its official language, during the course of the third and fourth centuries AD, the inhabitants of the region began to embrace Christianity. Along with Latin and Greek, Syriac became one of the three most important Christian languages in the centuries of the Christian Era. Primarily a Christian medium of expression, Syriac had a cultural and literary influence on the development of Arabic. Syriac remains the language of Syriac Christianity to this day. Syriac is a Middle Aramaic language and, as such, a language of the Northwestern branch of the Semitic family and it is written in the Syriac alphabet, a derivation of the Aramaic alphabet. Syriac was the local accent of Aramaic in Edessa, that evolved under the influence of Church of the East and it has been found as far afield as Hadrians Wall in Ancient Britain, with inscriptions written by Assyrian and Aramean soldiers of the Roman Empire. Modern Syriac/Modern Syriac Aramaic is an occasionally used to refer to the modern Eastern Aramaic languages. In this terminology, Modern Syriac is divided into, Modern Western Syriac Aramaic, note however that these are sometimes excluded from the category of Modern Syriac. The modern varieties are, therefore, not discussed in this article, in 132 BC, the kingdom of Osroene was founded in Edessa and Proto-Syriac evolved in that kingdom. Many Syriac-speakers still look to Edessa as the cradle of their language, there are about eighty extant early Syriac inscriptions, dated to the first three centuries AD. All of these examples of the language are non-Christian. As an official language, Syriac was given a relatively coherent form, style, in the 3rd century, churches in Edessa began to use Syriac as the language of worship. There is evidence that the adoption of Syriac, the language of the Assyrian people, was to effect mission, much literary effort was put into the production of an authoritative translation of the Bible into Syriac, the Peshitta. At the same time, Ephrem the Syrian was producing the most treasured collection of poetry, in 489, many Syriac-speaking Christians living in the eastern reaches of the Roman Empire fled to the Sassanid Empire to escape persecution and growing animosity with Greek-speaking Christians. The Christological differences with the Church of the East led to the bitter Nestorian schism in the Syriac-speaking world, as a result, Syriac developed distinctive western and eastern varieties. Syriac literature is by far the most prodigious of the various Aramaic languages and its corpus covers poetry, prose, theology, liturgy, hymnody, history, philosophy, science, medicine and natural history

13.
Akkadian language
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Akkadian is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the writing system, which was originally used to write the unrelated Ancient Sumerian. The language was named after the city of Akkad, a centre of Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire. The mutual influence between Sumerian and Akkadian had led scholars to describe the languages as a sprachbund, Akkadian proper names were first attested in Sumerian texts from around the mid 3rd-millennium BC. From the second half of the third millennium BC, texts written in Akkadian begin to appear. By the second millennium BC, two variant forms of the language were in use in Assyria and Babylonia, known as Assyrian and Babylonian respectively, for centuries, Akkadian was the native language in Mesopotamian nations such as Assyria and Babylonia. However, it began to decline during the Neo-Assyrian Empire around the 8th century BC, by the Hellenistic period, the language was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia. The last known Akkadian cuneiform document dates from the 1st century AD, Akkadian belongs with the other Semitic languages in the Near Eastern branch of the Afroasiatic languages, a family native to East Africa, which then spread to West, Northwest and Northeast Africa. Within the Near Eastern Semitic languages, Akkadian forms an East Semitic subgroup and this novel word order is due to the influence of the Sumerian substratum, which has an SOV order. Additionally Akkadian is the only Semitic language to use the prepositions ina and ana, other Semitic languages like Arabic and Aramaic have the prepositions bi/bə and li/lə. The origin of the Akkadian spatial prepositions is unknown, in contrast to most other Semitic languages, Akkadian has only one non-sibilant fricative, ḫ. Akkadian lost both the glottal and pharyngeal fricatives, which are characteristic of the other Semitic languages, until the Old Babylonian period, the Akkadian sibilants were exclusively affricated. Old Akkadian is preserved on clay tablets dating back to c.2500 BC and it was written using cuneiform, a script adopted from the Sumerians using wedge-shaped symbols pressed in wet clay. As employed by Akkadian scribes, the cuneiform script could represent either Sumerian logograms, Sumerian syllables, Akkadian syllables. For this reason, the sign AN can on the one hand be a logogram for the word ilum, additionally, this sign was used as a determinative for divine names. Another peculiarity of Akkadian cuneiform is that many signs do not have a phonetic value. Certain signs, such as AḪ, do not distinguish between the different vowel qualities, nor is there any coordination in the other direction, the syllable -ša-, for example, is rendered by the sign ŠA, but also by the sign NĪĜ. Both of these are used for the same syllable in the same text

14.
Samuel Birch
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Samuel Birch was a British Egyptologist and antiquary. Birch was the son of a rector at St Mary Woolnoth and he was educated at Merchant Taylors School. From an early age, his manifest tendency to the study of out-of-the-way subjects well suited his later interest in archaeology, after brief employment in the Record Office, he obtained, in 1836, an appointment to the antiquities department of the British Museum. The appointment was due to his knowledge of Chinese, which was unusual at that time and he soon broadened his research to Egyptian. When the cumbrous department came to be divided, he was appointed to head the Egyptian and Assyrian branch. In the latter language he had assistance, but for years there was only one other person in the institution, in a different department. The entire arrangement of the department devolved upon Birch and he further wrote what was long a standard history of pottery, investigated the Cypriote syllabary, and proved by various publications that he had not lost his old interest in Chinese. Paradoxical in many of his views on things in general, he was sound and cautious as a philologist, while learned and laborious and his grandfather, also named Samuel Birch was a renowned dramatist and Lord Mayor of London. Select Papyri in the Hieratic Character,3 pts. fol, tablets from the Collection of the Earl of Belmore,1843. An Introduction to the Study of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics,1857, History of Ancient Pottery,2 vols. A Description of the Collection of Ancient Marbles in the British Museum Part 11, inscriptions in the Himyaritic Character,1863. Egypts Place in Universal History,1867, facsimile of Papyrus of Rameses III, fol. The Monumental History of Egypt,1876, catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities at Alnwick Castle,1880. Dictionary of National Biography,1901 supplement​, works written by or about Samuel Birch at Wikisource

Samuel Birch
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Samuel Birch

15.
George Smith (assyriologist)
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George Smith, was a pioneering English Assyriologist who first discovered and translated the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest-known written works of literature. As the son of a family in Victorian England, Smith was limited in his ability to acquire a formal education. At age fourteen, he was apprenticed to the London-based publishing house of Bradbury and Evans to learn banknote engraving, from his youth, he was fascinated with Assyrian culture and history. In his spare time, he read everything that was available to him on the subject, in 1863 Smith married Mary Clifton, and they had six children. As early as 1861, he was working evenings sorting and cleaning the mass of friable fragments of clay cylinders, in 1866 Smith made his first important discovery, the date of the payment of the tribute by Jehu, king of Israel, to Shalmaneser III. Sir Henry suggested to the Trustees of the Museum that Smith should join him in the preparation of the third, Smiths earliest successes were the discoveries of two unique inscriptions early in 1867. This discovery is the cornerstone of ancient Near Eastern chronology, the other was the date of an invasion of Babylonia by the Elamites in 2280 BC. This work is known today as the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh. This journey resulted not only in the discovery of some missing tablets, in November 1873 Smith again left England for Nineveh for a second expedition, this time at the expense of the Museum, and continued his excavations at the tell of Kouyunjik. An account of his work is given in Assyrian Discoveries, published early in 1875, the rest of the year was spent in fixing together and translating the fragments relating to the creation, the results of which were published in The Chaldaean Account of Genesis. In March 1876, the trustees of the British Museum sent Smith once more to excavate the rest of Assurbanipals library, at Ikisji, a small village about sixty miles northeast of Aleppo, he fell ill with dysentery. He died in Aleppo on 19 August and he left a wife and several children to whom an annuity of 150 pounds was granted by the Queen. Smith wrote about eight important works, including studies, historical works. Assyrian Discoveries, An Account of Explorations and Discoveries on the Site of Nineveh, the Chaldean Account of Genesis George Smith. New York, Scribner, Armstrong & Co.1876, New York, Scribner, Armstrong & Co.1876. London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, New York, E. & J. B, the Buried Book, The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh. Ch 1–2 of Smiths life, includes new-found evidence about Smiths death, C. W. Ceram, Gods, Graves and Scholars, The Story of Archeology, trans. Garside and Sophie Wilkins, 2nd ed, the great good luck of Mister Smith, in Saudi Aramco World, Volume 22, Number 1, January/February 1971

George Smith (assyriologist)
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George Smith

16.
Cuneiform
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Cuneiform script, one of the earliest systems of writing, was invented by the Sumerians. It is distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus, the name cuneiform itself simply means wedge shaped. Emerging in Sumer in the fourth millennium BC, cuneiform writing began as a system of pictograms. In the third millennium, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use grew smaller, the system consists of a combination of logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs. Cuneiform writing was replaced by the Phoenician alphabet during the Neo-Assyrian Empire. By the second century CE, the script had become extinct, between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000 –100,000 have been read or published. Most of these have lain in these collections for a century without being translated, studied or published, the cuneiform writing system was in use for more than three millennia, through several stages of development, from the 34th century BC down to the second century CE. Ultimately, it was replaced by alphabetic writing in the course of the Roman era. It had to be deciphered as an unknown writing system in 19th-century Assyriology. Successful completion of its deciphering is dated to 1857, the cuneiform script was developed from pictographic proto-writing in the late 4th millennium BC. Mesopotamias proto-literate period spans roughly the 35th to 32nd centuries, the first documents unequivocally written in Sumerian date to the 31st century at Jemdet Nasr. Originally, pictographs were either drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with a reed stylus or incised in stone. This early style lacked the characteristic shape of the strokes. Proper names continued to be written in purely logographic fashion. The earliest known Sumerian king whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets is Enmebaragesi of Kish, from about 2900 BC, many pictographs began to lose their original function, and a given sign could have various meanings depending on context. The sign inventory was reduced from some 1,500 signs to some 600 signs, determinative signs were re-introduced to avoid ambiguity. Cuneiform writing proper thus arises from the more primitive system of pictographs at about that time, by adjusting the relative position of the tablet to the stylus, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions. Cuneiform tablets could be fired in kilns to provide a permanent record, many of the clay tablets found by archaeologists were preserved because they were fired when attacking armies burned the building in which they were kept

Cuneiform
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Trilingual cuneiform inscription of Xerxes at Van Fortress in Turkey, written in Old Persian, Akkadian, and Elamite
Cuneiform
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Sumerian inscription in monumental archaic style, c. 26th century B.C.E.
Cuneiform
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Letter sent by the high-priest Lu'enna to the king of Lagash (maybe Urukagina), informing him of his son's death in combat, c. 2400 B.C.E., found in Telloh (ancient Girsu).
Cuneiform
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Cuneiform inscriptions, Stela of Iddi-Sin, king of Simurrum.

17.
Austen Henry Layard
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Sir Austen Henry Layard GCB PC was an English traveller, archaeologist, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, politician and diplomat. He is best known as the excavator of Nimrud and of Niniveh, where he uncovered a large proportion of the Assyrian palace reliefs known, Layard was born in Paris, France, to a family of Huguenot descent. His father, Henry Peter John Layard, of the Ceylon Civil Service, was the son of Charles Peter Layard, Dean of Bristol, through his mother, Marianne, daughter of Nathaniel Austen, banker, of Ramsgate, his English descent was consolidated. His uncle was Benjamin Austen, a London solicitor and close friend of Benjamin Disraeli in the 1820s and 1830s, edgar Leopold Layard the ornithologist was his brother. In 1845, encouraged and assisted by Canning, Layard left Constantinople to make those explorations among the ruins of Assyria with which his name is chiefly associated, to illustrate the antiquities described in this work he published a large folio volume of Illustrations of the Monuments of Nineveh. After spending a few months in England, and receiving the degree of D. C. L and he is credited with discovering the Library of Ashurbanipal during this period. Layard believed that the native Syriac Christian communities living throughout the Near East were descended from the ancient Assyrians, Layard was an important member of the Arundel Society. During 1866 Layard founded Compagnia Venezia Murano and opened a venetian glass showroom in London at 431 Oxford Street, - Compagnia Venezia Murano is one of the most important brands of venetian art glass production. In 1866 he was appointed a trustee of the British Museum and he was present in the Crimea during the war, and was a member of the committee appointed to inquire into the conduct of the expedition. After being defeated at Aylesbury in 1857, he visited India to investigate the causes of the Indian Mutiny, the report he gave on his return proved to be controversial, generating negative responses in the Australian press. After the Liberals returned to office in 1868 under William Ewart Gladstone, Layard was made First Commissioner of Works, Layard resigned from office in 1869, on being sent as envoy extraordinary to Madrid. In 1877 he was appointed by Lord Beaconsfield Ambassador at Constantinople, where he remained until Gladstones return to power in 1880, in 1878, on the occasion of the Berlin Congress, he was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. In Venice he devoted much of his time to collecting pictures of the Venetian school, on this subject he was a disciple of his friend Giovanni Morelli, whose views he embodied in his revision of Franz Kuglers Handbook of Painting, Italian Schools. He wrote also an introduction to Constance Jocelyn Ffoulkess translation of Morellis Italian Painters, in 1887 he published, from notes taken at the time, a record of his first journey to the East, entitled Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia. Layard also from time to time contributed papers to learned societies, including the Huguenot Society. He died in London and is buried in Dorset, Layard, A. H. Inquiry into the Painters and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians. Layard, A. H. Nineveh and its Remains, Illustrations of the Monuments of Nineveh. A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon

18.
John Stainer
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Sir John Stainer was an English composer and organist whose music, though not generally much performed today, was very popular during his lifetime. His work as trainer and organist set standards for Anglican church music that are still influential. He was also active as an academic, becoming Heather Professor of Music at Oxford, Stainer was born in Southwark, London in 1840, the son of a cabinet maker. He became a chorister at St Pauls Cathedral when aged ten and was appointed to the position of organist at St Michaels College and he later became organist at Magdalen College, Oxford, and subsequently organist at St Pauls Cathedral. When he retired due to his eyesight and deteriorating health. He died unexpectedly while on holiday in Italy in 1901, John Stainer was the eighth of nine children born to William Stainer and his wife Ann on 6 June 1840. At least three of the children died in infancy, and John was much younger than his brother, William, the family lived in Southwark, London, where his father was a cabinet maker and later a vestry clerk and registrar of births. He was also a musician and player of the piano, violin. He built a chamber organ at home on which the precocious John used to accompany him when he played hymn tunes on the violin. His sister Ann also used it – she was the regular organist at Magdalen Hospital and it was a happy family, and young John seems to have been spoiled by his elders. He was precocious and could play Bachs Fugue in E major at the age of seven, in 1849, after a years probation, Stainer became a chorister at St Pauls Cathedral. He was already a player on keyboard instruments and possessed perfect pitch. In 1854 he was invited to sing in the first English performance of Bachs St Matthew Passion under William Sterndale Bennett at the Hanover Square Rooms and he travelled each day between his home in Streatham and the cathedral by steamboat. The choristers were required to sing for services at 9.30 a. m. and 3.15 p. m, a house in the cathedrals present choir school has since been named after him. He received organ lessons at St. Sepulchres Church, Holborn from George Cooper and he may have met future composer Arthur Sullivan, his junior by two years, there. At any rate they became friends and undertook activities together on half-holidays, in 1855 he was offered a six-month contract as organist at St Benets, Pauls Wharf. He proved successful, and his contract was renewed several times for further six-month terms, as he was still a minor, his salary of £30 per year was paid to his father. During this period, he deputised for the regular organists, Goss and Cooper

John Stainer
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Sir John Stainer
John Stainer
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St Michael's College, Tenbury
John Stainer
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Interior of Magdalen College Chapel
John Stainer
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St Paul's Cathedral at about the time Stainer was organist

19.
William Ewart Gladstone
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William Ewart Gladstone, FRS, FSS was a British Liberal and earlier conservative politician. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times, more than any other person, Gladstone was also Britains oldest Prime Minister, he resigned for the final time when he was 84 years old. Gladstone first entered Parliament in 1832, beginning as a High Tory, Gladstone served in the Cabinet of Sir Robert Peel. After the split of the Conservatives Gladstone was a Peelite – in 1859 the Peelites merged with the Whigs, as Chancellor Gladstone became committed to low public spending and to electoral reform, earning him the sobriquet The Peoples William. Gladstones first ministry saw many reforms including the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, after his electoral defeat in 1874, Gladstone resigned as leader of the Liberal Party, but from 1876 began a comeback based on opposition to Turkeys reaction to the Bulgarian April Uprising. Gladstones Midlothian Campaign of 1879–80 was an example of many modern political campaigning techniques. The government also passed the Third Reform Act, Back in office in early 1886, Gladstone proposed Irish home rule but this was defeated in the House of Commons in July. The resulting split in the Liberal Party helped keep out of office, with one short break. In 1892 Gladstone formed his last government at the age of 82, the Second Home Rule Bill passed the Commons but was defeated in the Lords in 1893. Gladstone resigned in March 1894, in opposition to increased naval expenditure and he left Parliament in 1895 and died three years later aged 88. Gladstone was known affectionately by his supporters as The Peoples William or the G. O. M, Gladstone is consistently ranked as one of Britains greatest Prime Ministers. Born in 1809 in Liverpool, at 62 Rodney Street, William Ewart Gladstone was the son of the slave-owning merchant Sir John Gladstone. Although born and brought up in Liverpool, William Gladstone was of purely Scottish ancestry, in 1814 young Willy visited Scotland for the first time, as he and his brother John travelled with their father to Edinburgh, Biggar and Dingwall to visit their relatives. William and his brother were both made freemen of the burgh of Dingwall, in 1815 Gladstone also travelled to London and Cambridge for the first time with his parents. In London he attended a service of thanksgiving with his family at St Pauls Cathedral following the Battle of Waterloo, William Gladstone was educated from 1816 to 1821 at a preparatory school at the vicarage of St Thomass Church at Seaforth, close to his familys residence, Seaforth House. In December 1831 he achieved the double first-class degree he had long desired, Gladstone served as President of the Oxford Union debating society, where he developed a reputation as an orator, which followed him into the House of Commons. At university Gladstone was a Tory and denounced Whig proposals for parliamentary reform, following the success of his double first, William travelled with his brother John on a Grand Tour of Europe, visiting Belgium, France, Germany and Italy. On his return to England, William was elected to Parliament in 1832 as Tory Member of Parliament for Newark, partly through the influence of the local patron, the Duke of Newcastle

William Ewart Gladstone
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The Right Honourable William Ewart Gladstone FRSFSS
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone
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Gladstone in the 1830s
William Ewart Gladstone
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A pensive Gladstone, from the book Great Britain and Her Queen, by Anne E. Keeling

20.
Cambridge University
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The University of Cambridge is a collegiate public research university in Cambridge, England, often regarded as one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Founded in 1209 and given royal status by King Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world. The university grew out of an association of scholars who left the University of Oxford after a dispute with the townspeople, the two ancient universities share many common features and are often referred to jointly as Oxbridge. Cambridge is formed from a variety of institutions which include 31 constituent colleges, Cambridge University Press, a department of the university, is the worlds oldest publishing house and the second-largest university press in the world. The university also operates eight cultural and scientific museums, including the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridges libraries hold a total of around 15 million books, eight million of which are in Cambridge University Library, a legal deposit library. In the year ended 31 July 2015, the university had an income of £1.64 billion. The central university and colleges have an endowment of around £5.89 billion. The university is linked with the development of the high-tech business cluster known as Silicon Fen. It is a member of associations and forms part of the golden triangle of leading English universities and Cambridge University Health Partners. As of 2017, Cambridge is ranked the fourth best university by three ranking tables and no other institution in the world ranks in the top 10 for as many subjects. Cambridge is consistently ranked as the top university in the United Kingdom, the university has educated many notable alumni, including eminent mathematicians, scientists, politicians, lawyers, philosophers, writers, actors, and foreign Heads of State. Ninety-five Nobel laureates, fifteen British prime ministers and ten Fields medalists have been affiliated with Cambridge as students, faculty, by the late 12th century, the Cambridge region already had a scholarly and ecclesiastical reputation, due to monks from the nearby bishopric church of Ely. The University of Oxford went into suspension in protest, and most scholars moved to such as Paris, Reading. After the University of Oxford reformed several years later, enough remained in Cambridge to form the nucleus of the new university. A bull in 1233 from Pope Gregory IX gave graduates from Cambridge the right to teach everywhere in Christendom, the colleges at the University of Cambridge were originally an incidental feature of the system. No college is as old as the university itself, the colleges were endowed fellowships of scholars. There were also institutions without endowments, called hostels, the hostels were gradually absorbed by the colleges over the centuries, but they have left some indicators of their time, such as the name of Garret Hostel Lane. Hugh Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded Peterhouse, Cambridges first college, the most recently established college is Robinson, built in the late 1970s

21.
Semitic languages
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The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family originating in the Middle East. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen School of History, the most widely spoken Semitic languages today are Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya, Hebrew, Aramaic and Maltese. Among them are the Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Maltese is the only Semitic language written in the Latin script and the only Semitic language to be an official language of the European Union. The Semitic languages are notable for their nonconcatenative morphology and that is, word roots are not themselves syllables or words, but instead are isolated sets of consonants. Words are composed out of not so much by adding prefixes or suffixes. For example, in Arabic, the root meaning write has the form k-t-b, the similarity of the Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic languages was accepted by Jewish and Islamic scholars since medieval times. Almost two centuries later, Hiob Ludolf described the similarities between these three languages and the Ethiopian Semitic languages, however, neither scholar named this grouping as Semitic. Viewed from this too, with respect to the alphabet used. Previously these languages had been known as the Oriental languages in European literature. In the 19th century, Semitic became the name, however. There are several locations proposed as sites for prehistoric origins of Semitic-speaking peoples, Mesopotamia, The Levant, Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula. Both the Near East and North Africa saw an influx of Muslim Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula, followed later by non-Semitic Muslim Iranian and Turkic peoples. The Arabs spread their Central Semitic language to North Africa where it gradually replaced Coptic and many Berber languages, with the patronage of the caliphs and the prestige of its liturgical status, Arabic rapidly became one of the worlds main literary languages. Its spread among the masses took much longer, however, as many of the populations outside the Arabian Peninsula only gradually abandoned their languages in favour of Arabic. As Bedouin tribes settled in conquered areas, it became the language of not only central Arabia, but also Yemen, the Fertile Crescent. Most of the Maghreb followed, particularly in the wake of the Banu Hilals incursion in the 11th century, and Arabic became the native language of many inhabitants of al-Andalus. After the collapse of the Nubian kingdom of Dongola in the 14th century, Arabic began to spread south of Egypt into modern Sudan, soon after, the Beni Ḥassān brought Arabization to Mauritania. Meanwhile, Semitic languages were diversifying in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where, under heavy Cushitic influence, they split into a number of languages, including Amharic, Arabic languages and dialects are currently the native languages of majorities from Mauritania to Oman, and from Iraq to the Sudan

22.
Ethiopic
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Geez is a script used as an abugida for several languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea. It originated as an abjad and was first used to write Geez, now the language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. In Amharic and Tigrinya, the script is often called fidäl, the Geez script has been adapted to write other, mostly Semitic, languages, particularly Amharic in Ethiopia, and Tigrinya in both Eritrea and Ethiopia. It is also used for Sebatbeit, Meen, and most other languages of Ethiopia, in Eritrea it is used for Tigre, and it has traditionally been used for Blin, a Cushitic language. Tigre, spoken in western and northern Eritrea, is considered to resemble Geez more than do the other derivative languages, some other languages in the Horn of Africa, such as Oromo, used to be written using Geez, but have migrated to Latin-based orthographies. For the representation of sounds, this uses a system that is common among linguists who work on Ethiopian Semitic languages. This differs somewhat from the conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet, see the articles on the individual languages for information on the pronunciation. The earliest inscriptions of Semitic languages in Eritrea and Ethiopia date to the 9th century BC in Epigraphic South Arabian, after the 7th and 6th centuries BC, however, variants of the script arose, evolving in the direction of the Geez abugida. This evolution can be seen most clearly in evidence from inscriptions in Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, at least one of Wazebas coins from the late 3rd or early 4th century contains a vocalized letter, some 30 or so years before Ezana. It has been argued that the marking pattern of the script reflects a South Asian system. On the other hand, emphatic P̣ait ጰ, a Geez innovation, is a modification of Ṣädai ጸ, while Pesa ፐ is based on Tawe ተ. Thus, there are 24 correspondences of Geez and the South Arabian alphabet, Many of the names are cognate with those of Phoenician. Two alphabets were used to write the Geez language, an abjad and later an abugida. The abjad, used until c.330 AD, had 26 consonantal letters, h, l, ḥ, m, ś, r, s, ḳ, b, t, ḫ, n, ʾ, k, w, ʿ, z, y, d, g, ṭ, p̣, ṣ, ṣ́, f, p Vowels were not indicated. Modern Geez is written left to right. The Geez abugida developed under the influence of Christian scripture by adding obligatory vocalic diacritics to the consonantal letters. The diacritics for the vowels, u, i, a, e, ə, o, were fused with the consonants in a recognizable but slightly irregular way, the original form of the consonant was used when the vowel was ä, the so-called inherent vowel. The resulting forms are shown below in their traditional order, for some consonants, there is an eighth form for the diphthong -wa or -oa, and a ninth for -yä

23.
Arabic
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Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested

Arabic
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The Galland Manuscript of One Thousand and One Nights, 14th century
Arabic
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Arabic is the sole official language
Arabic
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Bilingual traffic sign in Qatar.
Arabic
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Examples of how the Arabic root and form system works.

24.
William Wright (orientalist)
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Prof William Wright LLD was a famous British Orientalist, and Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge. Many of his works on Syriac literature are still in print and of considerable value, especially the catalogues of the holdings of the British Library. A Grammar of The Arabic Language, often known as Wrights Grammar. Wright is also remembered for the Short history of Syriac literature, Wright was educated at St Andrews University, Halle and Leiden. He was Professor of Arabic at University College London from 1855 to 1856, from 1861 to 1869 he was an Assistant in the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum, and from 1869 to 1870 Assistant Keeper at the museum. In 1870 he was appointed Sir Thomas Adamss Professor of Arabic at Cambridge University, on death he was returned to St Andrews for burial. His grave lies against the wall of St Andrews Cathedral churchyard. His early publications of Syriac material appeared in the Journal of Sacred Literature in the 1860s and these included the publication of the Syriac text of An ancient Syrian martyrology in the October 1865 issue. He then went on to publish texts and translations of works listed below. He also translated and edited Casparis Grammar of the Arabic Language, Wrights catalogue included excerpts from unpublished texts, and is still a valuable reference even today. He also compiled a valuable catalogue of the Cambridge University Library collection. The manuscripts in this collection came mainly from Anglican Missionaries based at Urmiah and his Short history of Syriac literature was written originally as an encyclopedia article, and so has no proper sub-divisions. It was republished after his death in book form, and has remained a basic handbook for the student of Syriac, the material in it comes from various sources, but much of it from the Chronicum Ecclesiasticum of Bar Hebraeus, of which no English translation exists. A bibliography of his work can be found by R. L. Benaly, in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,1889, pp.708, there is also an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography. The book of Jonah in four versions, Chaldee, Syriac. Contributions to the literature of the New Testament / collected and edited from Syriac manuscripts in the British Museum, with an English translation and notes. The departure of my Lady Mary from this world / edited from two Syriac MSS. in the British Museum, and translated by W. Wright, the homilies of Aphraates, the Persian sage / Aphraates, the Persian sage. A Grammar of The Arabic Language, simon Wallenberg Press, Vol-1 & Vol-2 ISBN 1-84356-028-3 Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in The British Museum acquired since the year 1838,3 vols, vol

25.
Ancient Egyptian language
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The language spoken in ancient Egypt was a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. The earliest known complete sentence in the Egyptian language has been dated to about 2690 BCE, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the seventeenth century in the form of Coptic. The national language of modern Egypt is Egyptian Arabic, which gradually replaced Coptic as the language of life in the centuries after the Muslim conquest of Egypt. Coptic is still used as the language of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. It has several hundred fluent speakers today, the Egyptian language belongs to the Afroasiatic language family. Of the other Afroasiatic branches, Egyptian shows its greatest affinities with Semitic, in Egyptian, the Proto-Afroasiatic voiced consonants */d z ð/ developed into pharyngeal ⟨ꜥ⟩ /ʕ/, e. g. Eg. Afroasiatic */l/ merged with Egyptian ⟨n⟩, ⟨r⟩, ⟨ꜣ⟩, and ⟨j⟩ in the dialect on which the language was based. Original */k g ḳ/ palatalize to ⟨ṯ j ḏ⟩ in some environments and are preserved as ⟨k g q⟩ in others, Egyptian has many biradical and perhaps monoradical roots, in contrast to the Semitic preference for triradical roots. Egyptian probably is more archaic in this regard, whereas Semitic likely underwent later regularizations converting roots into the triradical pattern, scholars group the Egyptian language into six major chronological divisions, Archaic Egyptian language Old Egyptian language Middle Egyptian language, characterizing Middle Kingdom. Demotic Coptic The earliest Egyptian glyphs date back to around 3300 BC and these early texts are generally lumped together under the general term Archaic Egyptian. They record names, titles and labels, but a few of them show morphological and syntactic features familiar from later, more complete, Old Egyptian is dated from the oldest known complete sentence, found in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen and dated to around 2690 BCE. It reads, dmḏ. n. f t3wj n z3. f nswt-bjt pr-jb. snj He has united the Two Lands for his son, extensive texts appear from about 2600 BCE. Demotic first appears about 650 BCE and survived as a written language until the fifth century CE and it probably survived in the Egyptian countryside as a spoken language for several centuries after that. Bohairic Coptic is still used by the Coptic Churches, Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian were all written using hieroglyphs and hieratic. Demotic was written using a script derived from hieratic, its appearance is similar to modern Arabic script and is also written from right to left. Coptic is written using the Coptic alphabet, a form of the Greek alphabet with a number of symbols borrowed from Demotic for sounds that did not occur in ancient Greek. Arabic became the language of Egypts political administration soon after the early Muslim conquests in the seventh century, today, Coptic survives as the sacred language of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and the Coptic Catholic Church

26.
Iraq
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The capital, and largest city, is Baghdad. The main ethnic groups are Arabs and Kurds, others include Assyrians, Turkmen, Shabakis, Yazidis, Armenians, Mandeans, Circassians, around 95% of the countrys 36 million citizens are Muslims, with Christianity, Yarsan, Yezidism, and Mandeanism also present. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish, two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run south through Iraq and into the Shatt al-Arab near the Persian Gulf. These rivers provide Iraq with significant amounts of fertile land, the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, historically known as Mesopotamia, is often referred to as the cradle of civilisation. It was here that mankind first began to read, write, create laws, the area has been home to successive civilisations since the 6th millennium BC. Iraq was the centre of the Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian and it was also part of the Median, Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Ayyubid, Mongol, Safavid, Afsharid, and Ottoman empires. Iraqs modern borders were mostly demarcated in 1920 by the League of Nations when the Ottoman Empire was divided by the Treaty of Sèvres, Iraq was placed under the authority of the United Kingdom as the British Mandate of Mesopotamia. A monarchy was established in 1921 and the Kingdom of Iraq gained independence from Britain in 1932, in 1958, the monarchy was overthrown and the Iraqi Republic created. Iraq was controlled by the Arab Socialist Baath Party from 1968 until 2003, after an invasion by the United States and its allies in 2003, Saddam Husseins Baath Party was removed from power and multi-party parliamentary elections were held in 2005. The American presence in Iraq ended in 2011, but the Iraqi insurgency continued and intensified as fighters from the Syrian Civil War spilled into the country, the Arabic name العراق al-ʿIrāq has been in use since before the 6th century. There are several suggested origins for the name, one dates to the Sumerian city of Uruk and is thus ultimately of Sumerian origin, as Uruk was the Akkadian name for the Sumerian city of Urug, containing the Sumerian word for city, UR. An Arabic folk etymology for the name is rooted, well-watered. During the medieval period, there was a region called ʿIrāq ʿArabī for Lower Mesopotamia and ʿIrāq ʿajamī, for the region now situated in Central and Western Iran. The term historically included the south of the Hamrin Mountains. The term Sawad was also used in early Islamic times for the region of the plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In English, it is either /ɪˈrɑːk/ or /ɪˈræk/, the American Heritage Dictionary, the pronunciation /aɪˈræk/ is frequently heard in U. S. media. Since approximately 10,000 BC, Iraq was one of centres of a Caucasoid Neolithic culture where agriculture, the following Neolithic period is represented by rectangular houses. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gypsum, finds of obsidian tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations

27.
Istanbul
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Istanbul, historically known as Constantinople and Byzantium, is the most populous city in Turkey and the countrys economic, cultural, and historic center. Istanbul is a city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosphorus strait between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of its population lives on the Asian side, the city is the administrative center of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, both hosting a population of around 14.7 million residents. Istanbul is one of the worlds most populous cities and ranks as the worlds 7th-largest city proper, founded under the name of Byzantion on the Sarayburnu promontory around 660 BCE, the city developed to become one of the most significant in history. After its reestablishment as Constantinople in 330 CE, it served as a capital for almost 16 centuries, during the Roman and Byzantine, the Latin. Overlooked for the new capital Ankara during the period, the city has since regained much of its prominence. The population of the city has increased tenfold since the 1950s, as migrants from across Anatolia have moved in, arts, music, film, and cultural festivals were established at the end of the 20th century and continue to be hosted by the city today. Infrastructure improvements have produced a complex transportation network, considered a global city, Istanbul has one of the fastest-growing metropolitan economies in the world. It hosts the headquarters of many Turkish companies and media outlets and accounts for more than a quarter of the gross domestic product. Hoping to capitalize on its revitalization and rapid expansion, Istanbul has bid for the Summer Olympics five times in twenty years, the first known name of the city is Byzantium, the name given to it at its foundation by Megarean colonists around 660 BCE. The name is thought to be derived from a personal name, ancient Greek tradition refers to a legendary king of that name as the leader of the Greek colonists. Modern scholars have hypothesized that the name of Byzas was of local Thracian or Illyrian origin. He also attempted to promote the name Nova Roma and its Greek version Νέα Ῥώμη Nea Romē, the use of Constantinople to refer to the city during the Ottoman period is now considered politically incorrect, even if not historically inaccurate, by Turks. By the 19th century, the city had acquired other names used by foreigners or Turks. Europeans used Constantinople to refer to the whole of the city, pera was used to describe the area between the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, but Turks also used the name Beyoğlu. The name İstanbul is commonly held to derive from the Medieval Greek phrase εἰς τὴν Πόλιν and this reflected its status as the only major city in the vicinity. The importance of Constantinople in the Ottoman world was reflected by its Ottoman name Der Saadet meaning the gate to Prosperity in Ottoman. An alternative view is that the name evolved directly from the name Constantinople, with the first, a Turkish folk etymology traces the name to Islam bol plenty of Islam because the city was called Islambol or Islambul as the capital of the Islamic Ottoman Empire

28.
Ottoman Empire
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After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe

29.
Egypt
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Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, the Red Sea to the east and south, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan, and across from the Sinai Peninsula lies Saudi Arabia, although Jordan and it is the worlds only contiguous Afrasian nation. Egypt has among the longest histories of any country, emerging as one of the worlds first nation states in the tenth millennium BC. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt experienced some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government. One of the earliest centres of Christianity, Egypt was Islamised in the century and remains a predominantly Muslim country. With over 92 million inhabitants, Egypt is the most populous country in North Africa and the Arab world, the third-most populous in Africa, and the fifteenth-most populous in the world. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about 40,000 square kilometres, the large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypts territory, are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypts residents live in areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria. Modern Egypt is considered to be a regional and middle power, with significant cultural, political, and military influence in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Egypts economy is one of the largest and most diversified in the Middle East, Egypt is a member of the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, Arab League, African Union, and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Miṣr is the Classical Quranic Arabic and modern name of Egypt. The name is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם‎, the oldest attestation of this name for Egypt is the Akkadian

30.
Coptic language
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Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the latest stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afroasiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Several distinct Coptic dialects are identified, the most prominent of which are Sahidic, originating in parts of Upper Egypt, Coptic and Demotic are grammatically closely related to Late Egyptian, which was written with Egyptian hieroglyphs. Coptic flourished as a language from the second to thirteenth centuries. It was supplanted by Egyptian Arabic as a spoken language toward the modern period. The native Coptic name for the language is ϯⲙⲉⲧⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ /timetremenˈkʰeːmi/ in the Bohairic dialect, the particle prefix met- from the verb ⲙⲟⲩϯ mouti forms all abstract nouns in Coptic. Thus, the whole expression literally means language of the people of Egypt, another name by which the language has been called is ⲧⲙⲛ̄ⲧⲕⲩⲡⲧⲁⲓⲟⲛ /timentkuptaion/ from the Copto-Greek form ⲧⲙⲛ̄ⲧⲁⲓⲅⲩⲡⲧⲓⲟⲛ /timentaiguption/. The term logos ən aiguptios is also attested in Sahidic, in the liturgy of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, the name is more officially ϯⲁⲥⲡⲓ ⲛ̀ⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ti aspi ən rem ən kēmi, the Egyptian language, aspi being the Egyptian word for language. Coptic is today spoken liturgically in the Coptic Orthodox and Coptic Catholic Church, the language is spoken only in Egypt and historically has had little influence outside of the territory, except for monasteries located in Nubia. It should be noted, however, that Coptic ⲉⲙⲥⲁϩ is grammatically masculine, hence it is unclear why the word should have entered Arabic with an initial t, which would have required the word to be grammatically feminine. ṭūbah طوبة brick, Sahidic ⲧⲱⲃⲉ to, be, Bohairic ⲧⲱⲃⲓ to, bi, this subsequently entered Catalan and Spanish as tova and adobe respectively, the latter of which was borrowed by American English. However, most words of Egyptian origin that entered into Greek and subsequently into other European languages came directly from Ancient Egyptian, an example is the Greek ὄασις oasis, which comes directly from Egyptian wḥ3. t or demotic wḥỉ. However, Coptic reborrowed some words of Ancient Egyptian origin into its lexicon, for example, both Sahidic and Bohairic use the word ebenos, which was taken directly from Greek ἔβενος ebony, originally from Egyptian hbny. It was adapted into Arabic as Babnouda, which remains a name among Egyptian Copts to this day. It was also borrowed into Greek as the name Παφνούτιος and that, in turn, is the source of the Russian name Пафнутий, like the mathematician Pafnuty Chebyshev. The Old Nubian language and the modern Nobiin language borrowed many words of Coptic origin, the Egyptian language may have the longest documented history of any language, from Old Egyptian that appeared just before 3200 BC to its final phases as Coptic in the Middle Ages. Coptic belongs to the Later Egyptian phase, which started to be written in the New Kingdom of Egypt, Later Egyptian represented colloquial speech of the later periods. It had analytic features like definite and indefinite articles and periphrastic verb conjugation, Coptic, therefore, is a reference to both the most recent stage of Egyptian after Demotic and the new writing system that was adapted from the Greek alphabet. The earliest attempts to write the Egyptian language using the Greek alphabet are Greek transcriptions of Egyptian proper names, scholars frequently refer to this phase as pre-Coptic

31.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population

32.
Hieroglyph
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A hieroglyph is a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called hieroglyphs, in Neoplatonism, especially during the Renaissance, a hieroglyph was an artistic representation of an esoteric idea, which Neoplatonists believed actual Egyptian hieroglyphs to be. The word hieroglyphics refer to a hieroglyphic script, middle Egyptian, An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, A Practical Guide, the Story of Writing, Alphabets, Hieroglyphs & Pictograms

33.
Papyri
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The word papyrus /pəˈpaɪrəs/ refers to a thick precursor to modern paper made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus. Papyrus can also refer to a document written on sheets of papyrus joined together side by side and rolled up into a scroll, the plural for such documents is papyri. Papyrus is first known to have used in ancient Egypt. It was also used throughout the Mediterranean region and in Kingdom of Kush, the Ancient Egyptians used papyrus as a writing material, as well as employing it commonly in the construction of other artifacts such as reed boats, mats, rope, sandals, and baskets. Papyrus was first manufactured in Egypt as far back as the fourth millennium BCE, the earliest archaeological evidence of papyrus was excavated in 2012 and 2013 at Wadi al-Jarf, an ancient Egyptian harbor located on the Red Sea coast. The papyrus rolls describe the last years of building the Great Pyramid of Giza, in the first centuries BCE and CE, papyrus scrolls gained a rival as a writing surface in the form of parchment, which was prepared from animal skins. Sheets of parchment were folded to form quires from which book-form codices were fashioned, early Christian writers soon adopted the codex form, and in the Græco-Roman world, it became common to cut sheets from papyrus rolls to form codices. Codices were an improvement on the scroll, as the papyrus was not pliable enough to fold without cracking. Papyrus had the advantage of being cheap and easy to produce. Unless the papyrus was of quality, the writing surface was irregular. Its last appearance in the Merovingian chancery is with a document of 692, the latest certain dates for the use of papyrus are 1057 for a papal decree, under Pope Victor II, and 1087 for an Arabic document. Its use in Egypt continued until it was replaced by more inexpensive paper introduced by Arabs who originally learned of it from the Chinese, by the 12th century, parchment and paper were in use in the Byzantine Empire, but papyrus was still an option. Papyrus was made in several qualities and prices, pliny the Elder and Isidore of Seville described six variations of papyrus which were sold in the Roman market of the day. These were graded by quality based on how fine, firm, white, grades ranged from the superfine Augustan, which was produced in sheets of 13 digits wide, to the least expensive and most coarse, measuring six digits wide. Materials deemed unusable for writing or less than six digits were considered commercial quality and were pasted edge to edge to be used only for wrapping, until the middle of the 19th century, only some isolated documents written on papyrus were known. They did not contain literary works, the first modern discovery of papyri rolls was made at Herculaneum in 1752. Until then, the papyri known had been a few surviving from medieval times. The English word papyrus derives, via Latin, from Greek πάπυρος, Greek has a second word for it, βύβλος

Papyri
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Papyrus (P. BM EA 10591 recto column IX, beginning of lines 13-17)
Papyri
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An official letter on a papyrus of the third century B.C.
Papyri
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A section of the Egyptian Book of the Dead written on papyrus
Papyri
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Bill of sale for a donkey, papyrus; 19.3 by 7.2 cm, MS Gr SM2223, Houghton Library, Harvard University

34.
Papyrus of Ani
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The Papyrus of Ani is a papyrus manuscript with cursive hieroglyphs and color illustrations created c.1250 BCE, in the 19th dynasty of the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt. The Papyrus of Ani is the manuscript compiled for the Theban scribe Ani, note, Divisions vary based on compilations, Sections are groups of related sentences, Titles are not original to the text. Ogden Goelet, Translation by Dr. Raymond O. Faulkner, Preface by Carol Andrews, Featuring Integrated Text and Full Color Images, c1994, contains, Map Key to the Papyrus, Commentary by Dr. Ogden Goelet, Selected Bibliography, and Glossary of Terms and Concepts. Eternal Egypt, Masterworks of Ancient Art from the British Museum, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, c1895, Dover ed.1967. Egyptian Text Transliteration and Translation, Introduction, etc. by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, the Egyptian Book of the Dead. This article is about an item held in the British Museum

Papyrus of Ani
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Thoth's declaration to the Ennead, based on the weighing of the heart of the scribe Ani

35.
Aristotle
–
Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist born in the city of Stagira, Chalkidice, on the northern periphery of Classical Greece. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, at seventeen or eighteen years of age, he joined Platos Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven. Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, teaching Alexander the Great gave Aristotle many opportunities and an abundance of supplies. He established a library in the Lyceum which aided in the production of many of his hundreds of books and he believed all peoples concepts and all of their knowledge was ultimately based on perception. Aristotles views on natural sciences represent the groundwork underlying many of his works, Aristotles views on physical science profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. Their influence extended from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, some of Aristotles zoological observations, such as on the hectocotyl arm of the octopus, were not confirmed or refuted until the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic. Aristotle was well known among medieval Muslim intellectuals and revered as The First Teacher and his ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. All aspects of Aristotles philosophy continue to be the object of academic study today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues – Cicero described his style as a river of gold – it is thought that only around a third of his original output has survived. Aristotle, whose means the best purpose, was born in 384 BC in Stagira, Chalcidice. His father Nicomachus was the physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. Aristotle was orphaned at a young age, although there is little information on Aristotles childhood, he probably spent some time within the Macedonian palace, making his first connections with the Macedonian monarchy. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his education at Platos Academy and he remained there for nearly twenty years before leaving Athens in 348/47 BC. Aristotle then accompanied Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor, there, he traveled with Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of the island. Aristotle married Pythias, either Hermiass adoptive daughter or niece and she bore him a daughter, whom they also named Pythias. Soon after Hermias death, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander in 343 BC, Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon. During that time he gave not only to Alexander

36.
Tell al-Amarna
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The name for the city employed by the ancient Egyptians is written as Akhetaten in English transliteration. Akhetaten means Horizon of the Aten, the city of Deir Mawas lies directly west across from the site of Amarna. Amarna, on the east side, includes several villages, chief of which are el-Till in the north. The area was occupied during later Roman and early Christian times. The name Amarna comes from the Beni Amran tribe that lived in the region, the ancient Egyptian name was Akhetaten. It may be that the Royal Wadis resemblance to the hieroglyph for horizon showed that this was the place to found the city, the city was built as the new capital of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, dedicated to his new religion of worship to the Aten. Construction started in or around Year 5 of his reign and was completed by Year 9. To speed up construction of the city most of the buildings were constructed out of mud-brick, the most important buildings were faced with local stone. Once it was abandoned it remained uninhabited until Roman settlement began along the edge of the Nile, however, due to the unique circumstances of its creation and abandonment, it is questionable how representative of ancient Egyptian cities it actually is. The entire city was encircled with a total of 14 boundary stelae detailing Akhenatens conditions for the establishment of new capital city of Egypt. The earliest dated stele from Akhenatens new city is known to be Boundary stele K which is dated to Year 5, IV Peret and it preserves an account of Akhenatens foundation of this city. Located on the east bank of the Nile, the ruins of the city are laid out north to south along a Royal Road. The Royal residences are generally to the north, in what is known as the North City, with an administration and religious area. If one approached the city of Amarna from the north by river the first buildings past the boundary stele would be the North Riverside Palace. This building ran all the way up to the waterfront and was likely the residence of the Royal Family. Located within the North City area is the Northern Palace, the residence of the Royal Family. Between this and the city, the Northern Suburb was initially a prosperous area with large houses. Most of the important ceremonial and administrative buildings were located in the central city, located behind the Royal Residence was the Bureau of Correspondence of Pharaoh, where the Amarna Letters were found

37.
Hormuzd Rassam
–
He is accepted as the first-known Chaldeans, Ottoman and Middle Eastern archaeologist. He was known to be Christian, later in life, he emigrated to the United Kingdom, where he was naturalized as a British citizen, settling in Brighton. He represented the government as a diplomat, helping to free British diplomats from captivity in Ethiopia, Hormuzd Rassam was an indigenous Chaldean born in Mosul in Upper Mesopotamia, then part of the Ottoman Empire. His parents were Christians, members of the Chaldean Catholic Church and his father, Anton Rassam, was from Mosul, and was archdeacon in the Assyrian Church of the East, his mother Theresa was a daughter of Isaak Halabee of Aleppo, also then within the Ottoman Empire. Hormuzds brother was British Vice-Consul in Mosul, which was how he obtained his start with Layard, at the age of 20 in 1846, Rassam was hired by British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard as a pay master at Nimrud, a nearby Assyrian excavation site. Layard, who was in Mosul on his first expedition, was impressed by the hard-working Rassam and took him under his wing, Layard provided an opportunity for Rassam to travel to England and study at Magdalen College, Oxford. He studied there for 18 months before accompanying Layard on his expedition to Iraq. Layard left archeology to begin a political career, Rassam continued field work at Nimrud and Nineveh, where he made a number of important and independent discoveries. These included the clay tablets that would later be deciphered by George Smith as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the worlds oldest written narrative poem. The tablets description of a flood myth written 1000 years prior to the earliest record of the Biblical story of Noah, in 1866, an international crisis arose in Ethiopia when British missionaries were taken hostage by Emperor Tewodros II. England decided to send Rassam as an ambassador with a message from Queen Victoria in the hope of resolving the situation peacefully, after being delayed for about a year in Massawa, Rassam at last received permission from the Emperor to enter his realm. At first his effort seemed promising, as the Emperor established him at Qorata, a village on the shores of Lake Tana. The emperor sent the British consul Charles Duncan Cameron, the missionary Henry Aaron Stern, however, about this time Charles Tilstone Beke, arrived at Massawa, and forwarded letters from the hostages families to Tewodros asking for their release. At the least Bekes actions only made Tewodros suspicious, the monarch suddenly changed his mind, and made Rassam a prisoner as well. Rassams reputation was damaged in newspaper accounts because he was portrayed as ineffectual in dealing with the emperor. This reflected Victorian prejudices of the time against Orientals, however, Rassam did have supporters, both in the press and especially in Government amongst both Liberal and Tory ministers. it shown by Mr. prisoners in the most serious risk. Queen Victoria presented him with a purse of £5,000 for services rendered as her envoy in the crisis, Rassam resumed his archaeological work, but did undertake other tasks for the British government in later years. During the Russo-Turkish War, he undertook a mission of inquiry to report on the condition of the Assyrian, Armenian, from 1877 to 1882, while undertaking four expeditions on behalf of the British Museum, Rassam made some important discoveries

38.
Nineveh
–
Nineveh was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located on the outskirts of Mosul in modern-day northern Iraq. It is on the bank of the Tigris River, and was the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. It is also a name for the half of Mosul which lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris in the modern day. Its ruins are across the river from the major city of Mosul. The two main tells, or mound-ruins, within the walls are Kouyunjik, the Northern Palace, large amounts of Assyrian sculpture and other artifacts have been excavated and are now located in museums around the world. Site remains suffered in the 2010s from the occupation of the area by ISIS, Iraqi forces recaptured the area in January 2017. The English placename Nineveh comes from Latin Ninive and Septuagint Greek Nineuḗ under influence of the Biblical Hebrew Nīnewēh, the original meaning of the name is unclear but may have referred to a patron goddess. The cuneiform for Ninâ is a fish within a house and this may have simply intended Place of Fish or may have indicated a goddess associated with fish or the Tigris, possibly originally of Hurrian origin. The city was said to be devoted to the Ishtar of Nineveh. The city was known as Ninii or Ni in Ancient Egyptian, Ninuwa in Mari, Ninawa in Aramaic, ܢܸܢܘܵܐ in Syriac. Nabī Yūnus is the Arabic for Prophet Jonah, Kouyunjik was, according to Layard, a Turkish name, and it was known as Armousheeah by the Arabs, and is thought to have some connection with the Kara Koyunlu dynasty. This whole extensive space is now one immense area of ruins overlaid in parts by new suburbs of the city of Mosul, Nineveh was one of the oldest and greatest cities in antiquity. The area was settled as early as 6000 BC and, by 3000 BC, had become an important religious center for the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, the early city was constructed on a fault line and, consequently, suffered damage from a number of earthquakes. One such event destroyed the first temple of Ishtar, which was rebuilt in 2260 BC by the Akkadian king Manishtushu. Texts from the Hellenistic period later offered an eponymous Ninus as the founder of Nineveh, the regional influence of Nineveh became particularly pronounced during the archaeological period known as Ninevite 5, or Ninevite V. This period is defined primarily by the pottery that is found widely throughout northern Mesopotamia. Also, for the northern Mesopotamian region, the Early Jezirah chronology has been developed by archaeologists, according to this regional chronology, Ninevite 5 is equivalent to the Early Jezirah I–II period. Ninevite 5 was preceded by the Late Uruk period, Ninevite 5 pottery is roughly contemporary to the Early Transcaucasian culture ware, and the Jemdet Nasr ware

Nineveh
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The reconstructed Mashki Gate of Nineveh
Nineveh
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Refined low-relief section of a bull-hunt frieze from Nineveh, alabaster, c. 695 BC (Pergamon Museum), Berlin.
Nineveh
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The king hunting lion from the North Palace, Nineveh seen at the British Museum
Nineveh
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Bronze lion from Nineveh.

39.
Henry Layard
–
Sir Austen Henry Layard GCB PC was an English traveller, archaeologist, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, politician and diplomat. He is best known as the excavator of Nimrud and of Niniveh, where he uncovered a large proportion of the Assyrian palace reliefs known, Layard was born in Paris, France, to a family of Huguenot descent. His father, Henry Peter John Layard, of the Ceylon Civil Service, was the son of Charles Peter Layard, Dean of Bristol, through his mother, Marianne, daughter of Nathaniel Austen, banker, of Ramsgate, his English descent was consolidated. His uncle was Benjamin Austen, a London solicitor and close friend of Benjamin Disraeli in the 1820s and 1830s, edgar Leopold Layard the ornithologist was his brother. In 1845, encouraged and assisted by Canning, Layard left Constantinople to make those explorations among the ruins of Assyria with which his name is chiefly associated, to illustrate the antiquities described in this work he published a large folio volume of Illustrations of the Monuments of Nineveh. After spending a few months in England, and receiving the degree of D. C. L and he is credited with discovering the Library of Ashurbanipal during this period. Layard believed that the native Syriac Christian communities living throughout the Near East were descended from the ancient Assyrians, Layard was an important member of the Arundel Society. During 1866 Layard founded Compagnia Venezia Murano and opened a venetian glass showroom in London at 431 Oxford Street, - Compagnia Venezia Murano is one of the most important brands of venetian art glass production. In 1866 he was appointed a trustee of the British Museum and he was present in the Crimea during the war, and was a member of the committee appointed to inquire into the conduct of the expedition. After being defeated at Aylesbury in 1857, he visited India to investigate the causes of the Indian Mutiny, the report he gave on his return proved to be controversial, generating negative responses in the Australian press. After the Liberals returned to office in 1868 under William Ewart Gladstone, Layard was made First Commissioner of Works, Layard resigned from office in 1869, on being sent as envoy extraordinary to Madrid. In 1877 he was appointed by Lord Beaconsfield Ambassador at Constantinople, where he remained until Gladstones return to power in 1880, in 1878, on the occasion of the Berlin Congress, he was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. In Venice he devoted much of his time to collecting pictures of the Venetian school, on this subject he was a disciple of his friend Giovanni Morelli, whose views he embodied in his revision of Franz Kuglers Handbook of Painting, Italian Schools. He wrote also an introduction to Constance Jocelyn Ffoulkess translation of Morellis Italian Painters, in 1887 he published, from notes taken at the time, a record of his first journey to the East, entitled Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia. Layard also from time to time contributed papers to learned societies, including the Huguenot Society. He died in London and is buried in Dorset, Layard, A. H. Inquiry into the Painters and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians. Layard, A. H. Nineveh and its Remains, Illustrations of the Monuments of Nineveh. A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon

40.
Ancient Egyptian religion
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Ancient Egyptian religion was a complex system of polytheistic beliefs and rituals which were an integral part of ancient Egyptian society. It centered on the Egyptians interaction with many deities who were believed to be present in, and in control of, rituals such as prayers and offerings were efforts to provide for the gods and gain their favor. Formal religious practice centered on the pharaoh, the king of Egypt and he acted as the intermediary between his people and the gods and was obligated to sustain the gods through rituals and offerings so that they could maintain order in the universe. The state dedicated enormous resources to Egyptian rituals and to the construction of the temples, individuals could interact with the gods for their own purposes, appealing for their help through prayer or compelling them to act through magic. These practices were distinct from, but closely linked with, the formal rituals, the popular religious tradition grew more prominent in the course of Egyptian history as the status of the Pharaoh declined. Another important aspect was the belief in the afterlife and funerary practices, the Egyptians made great efforts to ensure the survival of their souls after death, providing tombs, grave goods, and offerings to preserve the bodies and spirits of the deceased. The religion had its roots in Egypts prehistory and lasted for more than 3,000 years, the details of religious belief changed over time as the importance of particular gods rose and declined, and their intricate relationships shifted. At various times, certain gods became preeminent over the others, including the sun god Ra, the creator god Amun, for a brief period, in the theology promulgated by the Pharaoh Akhenaten, a single god, the Aten, replaced the traditional pantheon. Ancient Egyptian religion and mythology left behind many writings and monuments, along with significant influences on ancient, the beliefs and rituals now referred to as ancient Egyptian religion were integral within every aspect of Egyptian culture. Their language possessed no single term corresponding to the modern European concept of religion, the characteristics of the gods who populated the divine realm were inextricably linked to the Egyptians understanding of the properties of the world in which they lived. The Egyptians believed that the phenomena of nature were divine forces in and these deified forces included the elements, animal characteristics, or abstract forces. The Egyptians believed in a pantheon of gods, which were involved in all aspects of nature and their religious practices were efforts to sustain and placate these phenomena and turn them to human advantage. This polytheistic system was complex, as some deities were believed to exist in many different manifestations. Conversely, many forces, such as the sun, were associated with multiple deities. The diverse pantheon ranged from gods with vital roles in the universe to minor deities or demons with very limited or localized functions. It could include gods adopted from foreign cultures, and sometimes humans, deceased Pharaohs were believed to be divine, and occasionally, distinguished commoners such as Imhotep also became deified. The depictions of the gods in art were not meant as representations of how the gods might appear if they were visible. Instead, these depictions gave recognizable forms to the deities by using symbolic imagery to indicate each gods role in nature

Ancient Egyptian religion
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The gods Osiris, Anubis, and Horus, in order from left to right
Ancient Egyptian religion
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Amun-Ra kamutef, wearing the plumed headdress of Amun and the sun disk representing Ra
Ancient Egyptian religion
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The air god Shu, assisted by other gods, holds up Nut, the sky, as Geb, the earth, lies beneath.
Ancient Egyptian religion
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Colossal statue of the Pharaoh Ramesses II

41.
Osiris
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Osiris was an Egyptian god, usually identified as the god of the afterlife, the underworld, and the dead, but more appropriately as the god of transition, resurrection, and regeneration. He was also associated with the epithet Khenti-Amentiu, meaning Foremost of the Westerners, as ruler of the dead, Osiris was also sometimes called king of the living, ancient Egyptians considered the blessed dead the living ones. Osiris was considered the brother of Isis, Set, Nephthys, and Horus the Elder and he was described as the Lord of love, He Who is Permanently Benign and Youthful and the Lord of Silence. The Kings of Egypt were associated with Osiris in death – as Osiris rose from the dead they would, in union with him, inherit eternal life through a process of imitative magic. By the New Kingdom all people, not just pharaohs, were believed to be associated with Osiris at death, Osiris was widely worshipped as Lord of the Dead until the suppression of the Egyptian religion during the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Osiris is a Latin transliteration of the Ancient Greek Ὄσιρις IPA, in Egyptian hieroglyphs the name is appears as wsjr or jsjrt. Since hieroglyphic writing lacks vowels, Egyptologists have vocalized the name in various ways as Asar, Yasar, Aser, Asaru, Ausar, Ausir, Wesir, Usir, several proposals have been made for the etymology and meaning of the original name wsjr. John Gwyn Griffiths proposed a derivation from wsr signifying the powerful, moreover, one of the oldest attestations of the god Osiris appears in the mastaba of the deceased Netjer-wser. David Lorton proposed that Wsjr is composed by the morphemes set-jret signifying ritual activity, wolfhart Westendorf proposed an etymology from Waset-jret she who bears the eye. He also carries the crook and flail, the crook is thought to represent Osiris as a shepherd god. The symbolism of the flail is more uncertain with shepherds whip, fly-whisk and he was commonly depicted as a pharaoh with a complexion of either green or black in mummiform. The Pyramid Texts describe early conceptions of an afterlife in terms of travelling with the sun god amongst the stars. Amongst these mortuary texts, at the beginning of the 4th dynasty, is found, An offering the king gives, by the end of the 5th dynasty, the formula in all tombs becomes An offering the king gives and Osiris. Osiris is the father of the god Horus, whose conception is described in the Osiris myth. The myth described Osiris as having been killed by his brother Set, Isis joined the fragmented pieces of Osiris, but the only body part missing was the phallus. Isis fashioned a golden phallus, and briefly brought Osiris back to life by use of a spell that she learned from her father and this spell gave her time to become pregnant by Osiris before he again died. Isis later gave birth to Horus, as such, since Horus was born after Osiris resurrection, Horus became thought of as a representation of new beginnings and the vanquisher of the evil Set. Ptah-Seker thus gradually became identified with Osiris, the two becoming Ptah-Seker-Osiris, Osiris soul, or rather his Ba, was occasionally worshipped in its own right, almost as if it were a distinct god, especially in the Delta city of Mendes

42.
Nilotic
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In a more general sense, the Nilotic peoples include all descendants of the original Nilo-Saharan speakers. Among these are the Luo, Sara, Maasai, Kalenjin, Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Ateker, the Nilotes make up the majority of the population in South Sudan, an area that is believed to be their original point of dispersal. After the Bantu people, they constitute the second-largest group of peoples inhabiting the African Great Lakes region around the Eastern Great Rift and they make up a notable part of the population of southwestern Ethiopia as well. The Nilote peoples primarily adhere to Christianity and traditional faiths, including the Dinka religion, the terms Nilotic and Nilote were previously used as racial sub-classifications, based on anthropological observations of the distinct body morphology of many Nilotic speakers. Twentieth-century social scientists have largely discarded such efforts to classify peoples according to physical characteristics and they formed ethnicities and cultures based on shared language. Since the late 20th century, however, social and physical scientists are making use of data from population genetics, Nilotic and Nilote are now mainly used to classify Nilotic people based on ethnic identification and linguistic families. Etymologically, the terms Nilotic and Nilote derive from the Nile Valley, specifically, the Upper Nile and its tributaries, a Proto-Nilotic unity, separate from an earlier undifferentiated Eastern Sudanic unity, is assumed to have emerged by the 3rd millennium BC. The development of the Proto-Nilotes as a group may have connected with their domestication of livestock. The Eastern Sudanic unity must have been considerably earlier still, perhaps around the 5th millennium BC, the original locus of the early Nilotic speakers was presumably east of the Nile in what is now South Sudan. The Proto-Nilote of the 3rd millennium BC were pastoralists, while their neighbors, by about the 12th century, Luo peoples occupied the area that now lies in eastern Bahr el Ghazal. A Nilotic expansion southward, accompanied by ethnic and linguistic diversification, the reason was presumably the Islamization of Sudan and the eventual collapse of the Nubian Christian kingdom of Alodia. Most of the Luo moved to all the territories neighbouring Sudan. As a result, the separated groups developed variations in language, a branch of the Luo, the Shilluk nation, comprising more than one hundred clans and sub-tribes, was founded by a chief named Nyikango sometime in the middle of the 15th century. They evolved a nation with a feudal-style system, Nyikango and his nation moved northward along the Nile, towards Kush. The rest of the Luo groups rejected Nyikangos idea and kept a south, the Nilotes migrated to their modern territories in a lengthy process spanning about the 15th to 18th centuries. Thus, the Maasai, according to their own oral history and they reached the long trunk of land stretching from what is now northern Kenya to what is now central Tanzania during the 17th and 18th centuries. Includes languages like Turkana and Maasai, bari Teso–Lotuko–Maa Southern Nilotic - Spoken by Nilotic populations in western Kenya, northern Tanzania and eastern Uganda. Kalenjin Omotik–Datooga Western Nilotic - Spoken by Nilotic populations in South Sudan, Sudan, northeastern Congo, northern Uganda, southwestern Kenya, northern Tanzania, dinka–Nuer Luo Nilotic people constitute the bulk of the population of South Sudan

43.
Africa
–
Africa is the worlds second-largest and second-most-populous continent. At about 30.3 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earths total surface area and 20.4 % of its land area. With 1.2 billion people as of 2016, it accounts for about 16% of the human population. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos and it contains 54 fully recognized sovereign states, nine territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition. Africas population is the youngest amongst all the continents, the age in 2012 was 19.7. Algeria is Africas largest country by area, and Nigeria by population, afarensis, Homo erectus, H. habilis and H. ergaster – with the earliest Homo sapiens found in Ethiopia being dated to circa 200,000 years ago. Africa straddles the equator and encompasses numerous climate areas, it is the continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones. Africa hosts a diversity of ethnicities, cultures and languages. In the late 19th century European countries colonized most of Africa, Africa also varies greatly with regard to environments, economics, historical ties and government systems. However, most present states in Africa originate from a process of decolonization in the 20th century, afri was a Latin name used to refer to the inhabitants of Africa, which in its widest sense referred to all lands south of the Mediterranean. This name seems to have referred to a native Libyan tribe. The name is connected with Hebrew or Phoenician ʿafar dust. The same word may be found in the name of the Banu Ifran from Algeria and Tripolitania, under Roman rule, Carthage became the capital of the province of Africa Proconsularis, which also included the coastal part of modern Libya. The Latin suffix -ica can sometimes be used to denote a land, the later Muslim kingdom of Ifriqiya, modern-day Tunisia, also preserved a form of the name. According to the Romans, Africa lay to the west of Egypt, while Asia was used to refer to Anatolia, as Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the idea of Africa expanded with their knowledge. 25,4, whose descendants, he claimed, had invaded Libya, isidore of Seville in Etymologiae XIV.5.2. Suggests Africa comes from the Latin aprica, meaning sunny, massey, in 1881, stated that Africa is derived from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, meaning to turn toward the opening of the Ka. The Ka is the double of every person and the opening of the Ka refers to a womb or birthplace

44.
Flinders Petrie
–
Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, FRS, FBA, commonly known as Flinders Petrie, was an English Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom, some consider his most famous discovery to be that of the Merneptah Stele, an opinion with which Petrie himself concurred. Petrie developed the system of dating based on pottery and ceramic findings. William Matthew Flinders Petrie was born in Maryon Road, Charlton, Kent, England, Anne was the daughter of Captain Matthew Flinders, surveyor of the Australian coastline, spoke six languages and was an Egyptologist. His father taught his son how to survey accurately, laying the foundation for his archaeological career, at the age of eight, he was tutored in French, Latin, and Greek, until he had a collapse and was taught at home. He also ventured his first archaeological opinion aged eight, when visiting the Petrie family were describing the unearthing of the Brading Roman Villa in the Isle of Wight. The boy was horrified to hear the rough shovelling out of the contents, and protested that the earth should be pared away, inch by inch, to see all that was in it and how it lay. All that I have done since, he wrote when he was in his seventies, was there to begin with. I was already in archaeology by nature, on 26 November 1896, Petrie married Hilda Urlin in London. They had two children, John and Ann and they originally lived in Hampstead, where an English Heritage blue plaque now stands on the building they lived in,5 Cannon Place. Their son was John Flinders Petrie, the mathematician, who gave his name to the Petrie polygon, when he died in 1942, Petrie donated his head to the Royal College of Surgeons of London while his body was interred in the Protestant Cemetery on Mt. Zion. World War II was then at its height, and the head was delayed in transit, after being stored in a jar in the college basement, its label fell off and no one knew who the head belonged to. It was identified however, and is now stored, but not displayed, the chair of Edwards Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology at University College London was set up and funded in 1892 by a bequest of Amelia Edwards following her sudden death in that year. Petries supporter since 1880, Edwards had instructed that he should be its first incumbent and he continued to excavate in Egypt after taking up the professorship, training many of the best archaeologists of the day. In 1913 Petrie sold his collection of Egyptian antiquities to University College, London. One of his students was Howard Carter who went on to discover the tomb of Tutankhamun, in his teenage years, Petrie surveyed British prehistoric monuments in attempts to understand their geometry. On that visit, he was appalled by the rate of destruction of monuments, impressed by his scientific approach, they offered him work as the successor to Édouard Naville. Petrie accepted the position and was given the sum of £250 per month to cover the excavations expenses, in November 1884, Petrie arrived in Egypt to begin his excavations

45.
Caucasoid
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Ancient and modern Caucasoid populations were thus held to have ranged in complexion from white to dark brown. In the United States, the root term Caucasian has also often used in a different. First introduced in early racial typologies and anthropometry, the term denoted one of three purported races of humankind. The appellation Caucasian for the grouping was popularized by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who named it after the categorys archetypal skull, the traditional anthropological term Caucasoid is a portmanteau of the demonym Caucasian and the Greek suffix eidos, implying a resemblance to the native inhabitants of the Caucasus. It etymologically contrasts with the terms Negroid, Mongoloid and Australoid, the term Caucasian race was coined by the German philosopher Christoph Meiners in his The Outline of History of Mankind. Meiners acknowledged two races, the Caucasian or beautiful, and the Mongolian or ugly, in his earlier racial typology, Meiners put forth that Caucasians had the whitest, most blooming and most delicate skin. In a series of articles, Meiners boasts about the superiority of Germans among Europeans, such views were typical of early scientific attempts at racial classification, where skin pigmentation was regarded as the main difference between races. This view was shared by the French naturalist Julien-Joseph Virey, who believed that the Caucasians were only the palest-skinned Europeans and it was Johann Friedrich Blumenbach who gave the term a wider audience, by grounding it in the new methods of craniometry and Linnean taxonomy. He established Caucasian as the race, Mongoloid as the yellow race, Malayan as the brown race, Ethiopian as the black race. He also noticed that darker skin of an olive-tinge was a feature of some European populations closer to the Mediterranean Sea. However, pragmatically, Blumenbach acknowledged that skin color of the Caucasian variety naturally ranged from white to brown tones. Thus, Carleton S. Coon and Franco Bragagna included the native to all of Central. For example, Thomas Henry Huxley classified all populations of Asian nations as Mongoloid, lothrop Stoddard in turn classified as brown most of the populations of the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Central Asia and South Asia. Coon used the term Caucasoid and White race synonymously, in 1962, Coon published The Origin of Races, wherein he proposed a polygenist view, that human races had evolved separately from local varieties of Homo erectus. Dividing humans into five races, and argued that each evolved in parallel but at different rates. He argued that the Caucasoid race had evolved 200,000 years prior to the Congoid race, drawing from Petrus Campers theory of facial angle, Blumenbach and Cuvier classified races, through their skull collections based on their cranial features and anthropometric measurements. Caucasoid traits were recognised as, thin nasal aperture, a mouth, facial angle of 100°–90°. They assert that they can identify a Caucasoid skull with an accuracy of up to 95%, however, Alan H. Goodman cautions that this precision estimate is often based on methodologies using subsets of samples

46.
Ethnological
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Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationship between them. The term ethnologia is credited to Adam Franz Kollár who used and defined it in his Historiae ivrisqve pvblici Regni Vngariae amoenitates published in Vienna in 1783, the distinction between the three terms is increasingly blurry. Ethnology has been considered a field since the late 18th century especially in Europe and is sometimes conceived of as any comparative study of human groups. The 15th-century exploration of America by European explorers had an important role in formulating new notions of the Occidental, such as and this term was used in conjunction with savages, which was either seen as a brutal barbarian, or alternatively, as noble savage. Thus, civilization was opposed in a dualist manner to barbary, lévi-Strauss often referred to Montaignes essay on cannibalism as an early example of ethnology. Lévi-Strauss aimed, through a method, at discovering universal invariants in human society. However, the claims of such cultural universalism have been criticized by various 19th and 20th century social thinkers, including Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, Althusser, list of scholars of ethnology Forster, Johann Georg Adam. Voyage round the World in His Britannic Majesty’s Sloop, Resolution, Commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the Years 1772,3,4, the Elementary Structures of Kinship, Structural Anthropology Mauss, Marcel. Originally published as Essai sur le don, forme et raison de léchange dans les sociétés archaïques in 1925, this classic text on gift economy appears in the English edition as The Gift, The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Akwe-Shavante society, The Politics of Ethnicity, Indigenous Peoples in Latin American States, problemi generali delletnologia europea, La Ricerca Folklorica, No. Webpage History of German Anthropology/Ethnology 1945/49-1990 Languages describes the languages and ethnic groups found worldwide, national Museum of Ethnology - Osaka, Japan Texts on Wikisource, Rhyn, G. A. F. Van

47.
James Frazer
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Sir James George Frazer OM FRS FRSE FBA was a Scottish social anthropologist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion. He is often considered one of the fathers of modern anthropology. His most famous work, The Golden Bough, documents and details the similarities among magical, Frazer posited that human belief progressed through three stages, primitive magic, replaced by religion, in turn replaced by science. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of Daniel F. Frazer, a chemist, Frazer attended school at Springfield Academy and Larchfield Academy in Helensburgh. He studied at the University of Glasgow and Trinity College, Cambridge, from Trinity, he went on to study law at the Middle Temple, but never practised. Four times elected to Trinitys Title Alpha Fellowship, he was associated with the college for most of his life, except for a year, 1907–1908, spent at the University of Liverpool. He was knighted in 1914, and a lectureship in social anthropology at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Glasgow. He was, if not blind, then severely visually impaired from 1930 on and he and his wife, Lily, died in Cambridge within a few hours of each other. They are buried at the Ascension Parish Burial Ground in Cambridge and his sister Isabella Katherine Frazer married the mathematician John Steggall FRSE. The study of myth and religion became his areas of expertise, except for visits to Italy and Greece, Frazer was not widely travelled. His prime sources of data were ancient histories and questionnaires mailed to missionaries, Frazers interest in social anthropology was aroused by reading E. B. Tylors Primitive Culture and encouraged by his friend, the biblical scholar William Robertson Smith, Frazer was the first scholar to describe in detail the relations between myths and rituals. His theories of totemism were superseded by the work of the French anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss and his vision of the annual sacrifice of the Year-King has not been borne out by field studies. Yet The Golden Bough, his study of ancient cults, rites, the first edition, in two volumes, was published in 1890. The third edition was finished in 1915 and ran to twelve volumes and he published a single-volume abridged version, largely compiled by his wife Lady Frazer, in 1922, with some controversial material on Christianity excluded from the text. The works influence extended well beyond the bounds of academia. Sigmund Freud cited Totemism and Exogamy frequently in his own Totem and Taboo, Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages, the symbolic cycle of life, death and rebirth which Frazer divined behind myths of many peoples captivated a generation of artists and poets. Perhaps the most notable product of this fascination is T. S. Eliots poem The Waste Land

James Frazer
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Sir James George Frazer
James Frazer
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A snake shedding its skin
James Frazer
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Dead banana plants

48.
The Golden Bough
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The Golden Bough, A Study in Comparative Religion is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by the Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer. It was first published in two volumes in 1890, in three volumes in 1900, and in 12 volumes in the edition, published 1906–15. The work was aimed at a literate audience raised on tales as told in such publications as Thomas Bulfinchs The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods. The influence of The Golden Bough on contemporary European literature and thought was substantial and its thesis is that old religions were fertility cults that revolved around the worship and periodic sacrifice of a sacred king. Frazer proposed that mankind progresses from magic through religious belief to scientific thought and this thesis was developed in relation to J. M. W. Turners painting of The Golden Bough, a sacred grove where a certain tree grew day and night. It was a landscape in a dream-like vision of the woodland lake of Nemi, Dianas Mirror, where religious ceremonies. The king was the incarnation of a dying and reviving god and he died at the harvest and was reincarnated in the spring. Frazer claims that this legend of rebirth is central to almost all of the worlds mythologies, the books title was taken from an incident in the Aeneid, illustrated by Turner, in which Aeneas and the Sibyl present the golden bough to the gatekeeper of Hades to gain admission. The book scandalized the British public when first published, as it included the Christian story of Jesus, critics thought this treatment invited an agnostic reading of the Lamb of God as a relic of a pagan religion. For the third edition, Frazer placed his analysis of the Crucifixion in a speculative appendix, the books influence on the emerging discipline of anthropology was pervasive and undeniable. Despite the controversy generated by the work, and its critical reception amongst other scholars, william Butler Yeats refers to Frazers thesis in his poem Sailing to Byzantium. H. P. Lovecraft mentions the book in his short story The Call of Cthulhu, T. S. Eliot acknowledged indebtedness to Frazer in his first note to his poem The Waste Land. William Carlos Williams refers to it in Book Two, part two, of his poem in five books Paterson. Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, D. H and its literary ripples and references have given it continued life, even as its direct influence in anthropology has waned. He writes, Frazer is much more savage than most of these savages, weston LaBarre observed that Frazer was the last of the scholastics and wrote The Golden Bough as an extended footnote to a line in Virgil he felt he did not understand. Some modern critics set Frazer in the context of the history of ideas, for example Robert Ackerman in his The Myth and Ritual School, J. G. Frazer. This school was an important influence on much Modernist literature and this edition excludes Frazers references to Christianity. Abridged edition, edited by Robert Fraser for Oxford University Press,1994 and it restores the material on Christianity purged in the first abridgement

The Golden Bough
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The 1926 Macmillan Press edition
The Golden Bough
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J. M. W. Turner 's painting of the Golden Bough incident in the Aeneid
The Golden Bough
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The Judgement of Paris - an Etruscan bronze-handled mirror of the fourth or third century BC that relates the often misunderstood myth as interpreted by Frazer, showing the three goddesses giving their apple or pomegranate to the new king, who must kill the old king - Campana Collection, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, Sully

49.
Paranormal
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A paranormal phenomenon is different from hypothetical concepts such as dark matter and dark energy. Unlike paranormal phenomena, these concepts are based on empirical observations. The most notable paranormal beliefs include those that pertain to ghosts, extraterrestrial life, unidentified flying objects, psychic abilities or extrasensory perception, the term paranormal has existed in the English language since at least 1920. The word consists of two parts, para and normal, the definition implies that the scientific explanation of the world around us is normal and anything that is above, beyond, or contrary to that is para. On the classification of paranormal subjects, Terence Hines in his book Pseudoscience, what sets the paranormal apart from other pseudosciences is a reliance on explanations for alleged phenomena that are well outside the bounds of established science. Thus, paranormal phenomena include extrasensory perception, telekinesis, ghosts, poltergeists, life after death, reincarnation, faith healing, human auras, the explanations for these allied phenomena are phrased in vague terms of psychic forces, human energy fields, and so on. This is in contrast to many pseudoscientific explanations for other nonparanormal phenomena, in traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is a manifestation of the spirit or soul of a person. Alternative theories expand on that idea and include belief in the ghosts of deceased animals, sometimes the term ghost is used synonymously with any spirit or demon, however in popular usage the term typically refers to a deceased persons spirit. The belief in ghosts as souls of the departed is closely tied to the concept of animism, as the 19th-century anthropologist George Frazer explained in his classic work, The Golden Bough, souls were seen as the creature within that animated the body. Although the evidence for ghosts is largely anecdotal, the belief in ghosts throughout history has remained widespread, the possibility of extraterrestrial life is not, by itself, a paranormal subject. Many scientists are engaged in the search for unicellular life within the solar system, carrying out studies on the surface of Mars. Projects such as SETI are conducting a search for radio activity that would show evidence of intelligent life outside the solar system. Scientific theories of how life developed on Earth allow for the possibility that life developed on other planets as well, the paranormal aspect of extraterrestrial life centers largely around the belief in unidentified flying objects and the phenomena said to be associated with them. Early in the history of UFO culture, believers divided themselves into two camps, the first held a rather conservative view of the phenomena, interpreting them as unexplained occurrences that merited serious study. They began calling themselves ufologists in the 1950s and felt that logical analysis of sighting reports would validate the notion of extraterrestrial visitation, the second camp consisted of individuals who coupled ideas of extraterrestrial visitation with beliefs from existing quasi-religious movements. These individuals typically were enthusiasts of occultism and the paranormal, many had backgrounds as active Theosophists, Spiritualists, or were followers of other esoteric doctrines. In contemporary times, many of these beliefs have coalesced into New Age spiritual movements, both secular and spiritual believers describe UFOs as having abilities beyond what are considered possible according to known aerodynamic constraints and physical laws. The transitory events surrounding many UFO sightings also limits the opportunity for repeat testing required by the scientific method, acceptance of UFO theories by the larger scientific community is further hindered by the many possible hoaxes associated with UFO culture

Paranormal
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MediumEva Carrière photographed in 1912, with an apparent light appearing between her hands.
Paranormal
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Charles Fort, 1920. Fort is perhaps the most widely known collector of paranormal stories.
Paranormal
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Participant of a Ganzfeld experiment which proponents say may show evidence of telepathy.
Paranormal
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James Randi is a well-known investigator of paranormal claims.

50.
Occult
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The occult is knowledge of the hidden. In common English usage, occult refers to knowledge of the paranormal, as opposed to knowledge of the measurable, the terms esoteric and arcane can also be used to describe the occult, in addition to their meanings unrelated to the supernatural. Occultism is the study of practices, including magic, alchemy, extra-sensory perception, astrology, spiritualism, religion. Alchemy was common among important seventeenth-century scientists, such as Isaac Newton, Newton was even accused of introducing occult agencies into natural science when he postulated gravity as a force capable of acting over vast distances. By the eighteenth century these unorthodox religious and philosophical concerns were well-defined as occult, inasmuch as they lay on the outermost fringe of accepted forms of knowledge and they were, however, preserved by antiquarians and mystics. Occult science is the research into or formulation of occult concepts in a manner that resembles the way natural science researches or describes phenomena. In his 1871 book Primitive Culture, the anthropologist Edward Tylor used the term occult science as a synonym for magic, Occult qualities are properties that have no known rational explanation, in the Middle Ages, for example, magnetism was considered an occult quality. Newtons contemporaries severely criticized his theory that gravity was effected through action at a distance, some religions and sects enthusiastically embrace occultism as an integral esoteric aspect of mystical religious experience. This attitude is common within Wicca and many other modern pagan religions, some other religious denominations disapprove of occultism in most or all forms. They may view the occult as being anything supernatural or paranormal which is not achieved by or through God, monistic in contrast to Christian dualistic beliefs of a separation between body and spirit, Gnostic i. e. Walker, Benjamin. Encyclopedia of the Occult, the Esoteric and the Supernatural, harold W. Percival, Joined the Theosophical Society in 1892. Blavatsky, Occultism versus the Occult Arts, Lucifer, May 1888 Bardon, true to His Ways, Purity & Safety in Christian Spiritual Practice, ISBN 1-932124-61-6. ISBN 1-57863-150-5 Forshaw, Peter, The Occult Middle Ages, in Christopher Partridge, The Occult World, London, Routledge,2014 Gettings, Fred, Vision of the Occult, ISBN 0-7126-1438-9 Kontou, Tatiana – Willburn, Sarah. The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult, ISBN 978-0-7546-6912-8 Martin, W. Rische, J. Rische, K. & VanGordon, K. W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.201 p. N. B, the scope of this study also embraces the occult. ISBN 0-8028-0262-1 Partridge, Christopher, The Occult World, London, the Tree of Life, An Illustrated Study in Magic. Newton, Isaac, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John by Sir Isaac Newton Rogers, L. W. Hints to Young Students of Occultism. Albany, NY, The Theosophical Book Company, joseph H. Peterson, Twilit Grotto, Archives of Western Esoterica Occult Science and Philosophy of the Renaissance